


A Watcher, A Vampire And A Dead Man Walk Into A Bar…

by Thea_Bromine



Series: Dead!Giles Universe [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Multi, Sexual Content, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 13:46:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1389937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thea_Bromine/pseuds/Thea_Bromine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This follows <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165547"><i>Go No More A-Roving</i></a>; if you haven't read that one, you won't make much of this one.</p><p>Story summary — Wesley gets laid. He is surprised. Dead!Giles gets laid. He is very surprised. Spike has to do all the work. He claims not to be surprised at all. He may be lying. Vampires made them do it. </p><p>Sir Francis Dashwood and the Duke of Wharton both existed, and both are believed to have headed Hellfire Clubs. The Duke died in 1731 and Sir Francis (15th Baron le Despencer) in 1781; as far as I am aware they both remain fully and normally dead. </p><p>British spelling because this is happening in England.</p><p>The characters you recognise belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. The vampires you don’t belong to me. Sir Francis and the Duke of Wharton belong to themselves.</p><p>Chapter summary — Wesley demonstrates that he isn’t as stupid as he sometimes seems, and then demonstrates that actually, he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

One of these days, he thought, _one_ of these days, Spike would put his hand in his pocket and buy a round. It wasn’t even as if it would need to be a big round: they weren’t hanging about with an entire bar full of Watchers — or an entire bar full of vampires, come to that — so that it could end up with the sort of round that required Mr Memory to go to the bar. No, there was only Spike and Wesley himself, and although Spike had repaid his original loan in full (and hadn’t _that_ been a surprise?) he showed no signs of following it up with a cheerful cry of “what’re you drinkin’, Watcher?”

Still, times had certainly changed if Wesley was regularly drinking with a vampire at all. Somehow it had become a habit that every Friday night, they met in an unobtrusive part of an unobtrusive bar. Spike generally sank two pints to every one of Wesley’s… well, he had done until the week that he had sighed, and rolled his eyes, and said, “Watcher, you don’t like Guinness, an’ you don’t like bitter, an’ you don’t like lager, an’ cider makes you sick, an’ you’re too old fer those alcopop things. What _do_ you like? Gin an’ tonic? Vodka an’ lime? Port an’ lemon? Stop drinkin’ what you think _I_ like an’ drink what _you_ do. I don’t care what it is.”

Wesley had stared into his glass. “I like wine, but pub wine is so unreliable. Sometimes it’s very good. Sometimes it isn’t.”

“Next week we’ll go to a wine bar, then.”

That hadn’t been an unqualified success either: it was all bright lights and mirrors. Wesley had spent the whole evening looking over his shoulder, expecting to be seen by some Watcher on a more justified errand, and giving, Spike said, an excellent impression of a man Up To No Good, and he had also been aware at every stage that the reflection behind the bar showed an empty seat beside him to which he was addressing his remarks. Eventually they had tracked down a chain of restaurants with attached bars and both a decent wine list and the approval of the Campaign for Real Ale, together with a Friday Night Special available by the glass.

He tried not to think about it too often because it had so _many_ things wrong with it. He was drinking with a vampire. He was drinking with _that_ vampire. He was drinking _regularly_ with that vampire. He was disguising it from his colleagues. He was disguising it from his employer. He looked forward to it all week, and despised himself for it. When he went to meet Spike he felt, oddly, that Spike, despite his sarcastic comments — the man was nearly as bad as Mr Giles had been — was pleased to see him. That on its own would have been sufficient to keep him going. He had never looked forward to the occasional Friday night outing organised by some Watcher or other; he had always felt that he was included on sufferance, and because they were afraid of his father.

 _He_ was afraid of his father. He was afraid of his chilly disapproval, his obvious disappointment. Wesley had felt, since he first moved into his own flat, that he owed his parents a weekly visit; he was amazed that it had taken him so long to realise how pointless it was. If he went, he would be catechised on what he had been doing, in tones of weary dissatisfaction, by his father. His mother was fully occupied on a round of pointless charity organisations and social events, and never asked anything about his life, instead boring him with a commentary on hers. They merely wanted him to be some fictional construct of a son, successful and socially conspicuous to the greater glory of Roger and Helen Wyndham-Pryce. To begin with, he called at his parents’ Chelsea house every Saturday morning, carefully omitting any mention of having spent Friday night boozing with one of the undead. After the night on which he tried to match Spike drink for drink and ended up still hungover at three the following afternoon, he realised, from the lack of follow up from either of his parents, that they actually didn’t care, or probably even notice, whether he went there or not, and with some relief, stopped going.

The only odd thing about it was that he had said something vaguely resentful about it on a subsequent Friday night, after the third glass, along the lines of not going and never caring if he went again, and Spike had smiled, clapped him on the shoulder, and hauled him out of the bar, walking him home past an all-night burger van and insisting on him eating two bacon sandwiches. “You’ve had enough to drink tonight. Eat somethin’ an’ you won’t feel so bad in the morning’.”

He could almost have believed that the vampire cared, except that he was very well aware that nobody cared much, not even Wesley himself. Whatever was behind the vampire’s casual acceptance of his company, it wasn’t anything personal to Wesley, except possibly a desire to know what was going on inside the Watchers’ Council. Wesley knew enough to keep the vampire’s glamour from affecting him, and he was careful about what stories he retailed from work, because although Spike was… was _different_ somehow these days, he wasn’t altogether certain what the difference was, and after all, at bottom, the vampire was a _vampire_ and therefore not to be trusted. He was smarter than Wesley had altogether believed… no, that was the wrong word. He’d always been sharp, and Mr Giles had said once that he was better educated and more knowledgeable than he liked people to think. Certainly, a couple of times when Wesley had referred to fairly obscure texts with which he had been working, Spike had known what he was talking about. Well, that was the thing about immortality, Wesley supposed: you had time to catch up on your reading.

That might have made it a bad idea to have talked about his intention regarding the whispers that had been making their way around London. Wesley thought it was his duty to investigate them; Spike thought that was decidedly stupid, and didn’t hesitate to say so. Mind you, he wasn’t alone in that: there had always been plenty of people to tell Wesley that he was stupid, or weak, or inadequate. His father had certainly thought he was all three, and Mr Giles… he cringed when he remembered boasting to Mr Giles that he had been Head Boy at the Watchers’ Academy, in the certain knowledge that Mr Giles, however many years before, hadn’t been. It had taken him a shamefully long time, in Sunnydale, to grasp just how useless that item on his CV was. Odd, too, that the period at the Academy in which his behaviour was most nearly what his father wanted — good exam results, status among the other trainees — was nonetheless the period in which he had begun to understand that he was a disappointment to Roger. He still didn’t really understand why. He could understand why he was a disappointment _now_ — a failure in Sunnydale and bottom of the pecking order in London — but not then. His father thought that he had been corrupted by Mr Giles, that his discovery that the pre-War attitudes to women and the positively mediaeval attitudes to Slaying had no practical place in the life of a modern Slayer was ludicrously heretical, and that the only influence more damaging than that of Mr Giles was that of Buffy Summers.

Ridiculous, really, that Mr Giles, twenty-odd years his senior, should have grasped so much more quickly than he had done that the rôle of the Watcher couldn’t continue the way it had been.

“Oy, Watcher, wake up! Stop starin’ into space an’ talk to me.”

He jumped. “Oh… Yes, sorry, wool-gathering.” Actually, if his father had disapproved of Mr Giles and Buffy Summers, Wesley couldn’t imagine what he would make of the discovery that the nearest thing his son had to a friend was William the Bloody.

“You’re not serious about goin’ to chase up that load of reprobates, are you?”

“I’ve just heard that there was something going on. Some sort of internal… unrest.”

“Wes, there’s _always_ unrest among that lot, an’ they’re _dangerous_. That’s why they’re called the Hellfire Club, remember? It’s a clue.”

“Spike, everybody knows about the Hellfire Club. It might have had ambitions to be something more, but actually it was a dining and gambling club which added in activities in dubious taste and some really stupid costumes, but that was all.”

Spike looked exaggeratedly heavenward. “I’ll admit that the original Hellfire Clubs — _clubs_ , Wes, there was more than one — were basically excuses for posh toffs to drink too much an’ catch the pox from each other’s mistresses. Wharton was a plonker of the first order, by all accounts, an’ Dashwood was the most incompetent Chancellor of the Exchequer that we ever had, an’ we’ve had some right nitwits lookin’ after the petty cash.”

“It wasn’t called the Hellfire Club in his day…”

“Stick to the _point_. We’re talkin’ about the Knights of West Wycombe, or whatever. Same difference. What I’m sayin’ is that in the 18th century it was an excuse for a booze-up an’ a bit of ’ow’s yer father _but it isn’t now_. It was a club fer aristocrats wi’ too much money an’ not enough chin to slum it, an’ actually most of ’em hadn’t the money either an’ were livin’ on tick, _but it isn’t now_. When Wharton got turned it was a bloody shambles, same as before but with bitin’. Once Dashwood was turned, they got the hang of what they were supposed to be doin’ an’ they actually started doin’ it. Now it’s a club for aristocratic _vampires_ wi’ too much money an’ not enough chin to slum it, an’ some of them have got smart over the years. They were pretty vicious when they were human an’ they haven’t improved any since. Thing is, slummin’ it for them isn’t a thrupenny upright any more, or a pretty boy from a molly house. Now it’s a human Pet who’s kept fer blood an’ sex — sometimes both at once, you can get a real high feedin’ an fuckin’ at the same time, specially if they die while you’re doin’ it an’ you don’t want to know how I know that.” No, Wesley thought, he probably didn’t. “You got any idea how much mess five vampires make all feedin’ at once off the same human? Specially if they don’t bother wi’ the glamour an’ the ease?”

He frowned. “The… ease?”

Spike scowled and flicked his head crossly. “That’s what some of us call it. You know when we bite, we can pump in… it’s like a date rape drug. You know that? Makes ’em… pliant. Bit of anaesthetic, bit of aphrodisiac, bit of sedative?”

Wesley nodded. Everybody knew about that.

“It’s the default when we bite, to keep the prey quiet while we feed, but we don’t _have_ to do it. Well, a fledge does because the average fledge doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, an’ wi’out a bit of help he’d never manage to feed at all, but a fully grown vampire can turn it on an’ off. It… makes a difference.”

“I bet it bloody does,” said Wesley, inadvertently.

“Yeah. Some vampires don’t care about the prey being pliant. Some of ’em like it better when they struggle. Say a bit of fear freshens the blood. Don’t know if it’s true.”

“It… probably is,” said Wesley, thoughtfully. “We… they took us on a guided tour of an abattoir once. Said that Watchers who couldn’t cope with the sight of blood and dead bodies were… weren’t…”

Spike choked on his bitter. “An’ they thought that showin’ you around a _slaughterhouse_ would help? Good grief, I always said that Watcher trainin’ was crap but obviously I didn’t know the half of it.”

Wesley smiled into his wine glass. He had, over the last few years, been coming to the same conclusion, but he could hardly say so to the vampire. “Well, there were pigs coming in while we were there, and one of them escaped, and was running round and round the pen, squealing. When they caught it, they didn’t put it back with the others, and the slaughterman said that it was because the adrenaline tainted the meat. They would leave it to calm down and put it through with the next batch.”

Spike stared at him. “’An you people say that _we’re_ barbaric. _Well_ , I’m tellin’ you, half a dozen old, crabby vampires feedin’ off one human an’ not usin’ the ease, that’s a lot of screaming an’ thrashin’ and cryin’ an’ generally it’s not a pretty sight. Sometimes they’ll kill it when they’re done wi’ it; sometimes they don’t. They can keep one alive for _days_ if they try. But you’re a Watcher, Wes, an’ although that makes you by definition a plonker of the first order, I don’t actually want to see you dead, an’ in your case, they wouldn’t keep you alive. You’d be dead in minutes, an’ those minutes would feel like weeks. Better if you go on livin’.”

“Well, yes, thank you, I appreciate it, but nonetheless, the fact is that the Council really needs to know…”

“Wesley.”

He blinked. Spike never called him Wesley: Wes, or Watcher, or Pryce, or some rude name, but not Wesley. He looked up. Spike was sitting upright, not in his usual loose-limbed sprawl; he looked intimidating, severe, serious.

“Do _not_ go interfering with the Hellfire Club. By all means, report what you’ve heard to Harker, or Jessamy, or, what’s the woman’s name, Loveridge. Don’t go rushing in on your own, particularly not when you have nothing but hearsay to go on. It isn’t sensible. It isn’t intelligent. Do _not_ go.”

He felt his brow wrinkle; he’d probably had enough to drink, because he couldn’t work out how Spike would know about Jessamy or Loveridge. And…

“You know something? You sound _just_ like Mr Giles.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some biting. Hardly more than nibbling, really.

Spike sprinted through the outskirts of London leaving a trail of angry dog-walkers and ‘excuse _me’_ s behind him; he cared for neither. He spared a thought to be glad of his lack of need for oxygen; he’d been keeping up this speed for the best part of two miles, and somebody who exercised as little as he did, and who both smoked and drank, would by now be in some serious discomfort if it weren’t for the demon inside.

_Left here and over the railway bridge._

“What?”

 _If you’re willing to take some chances you can cut off about half a mile_.

“How do you know? How? Where?”

_Used to drink out this way. Down these steps. There used to be a place you could get through the fence_ _… mind you, that was forty years ago._

“Oh, thanks. There isn’t one now.”

_Take a run up at that Volvo. One foot on the bonnet, one on the roof and you’ll clear the fence easily._

“For whose value of ‘easy’?”

_Stop arguing and just do it, dammit! Never mind the car alarm. Now, left. Left! **Other** left! Straight down the side of the track. Don’t touch anything, I can’t remember which is the electric rail._

_“_ Oh, ta very much!”

_Well, look where you’re putting your feet, that’s all! Now look, see over that side? There’s a workman’s access gate. Straight over — look both ways, I don’t know what the timetabling is these days, I don’t know when the trains come — and up those steps. Over the gate — all right, break the bloody gate to pieces, see if I care — and turn right. There’s a little shopping arcade along here, or there used to_ _… yes, look, there. It comes out on Blaxton Road. Now_ **_run_ ** _, dammit._

“Next time, _you_ can provide the body an’ we’ll put _my_ soul in it.”

_Shut up and run!_

He ran. He ran through the arcade, scattering teenagers with bottles of cheap cider; he ran through the park, where the cheap cider belonged to older men with filthy raincoats; he ran through the business estate where security guards watched suspiciously until he was out of sight. He ran through the streets where the big Victorian and Edwardian houses advertised student accommodation available by the term. He stopped running at one end of a long, curving street with the same short-tenancy houses in a terraced arcade, but where one in the middle was considerably larger than the others, and lacked the cheap curtains and multi-occupancy rack of doorbells.

“Any ideas?”

_Where are they likely to have him?_

“How would I know? Bloody hell, we’ll just have to get in and search. They’ve probably…” He let it trail away. No need to say it; Rupert wasn’t daft. He knew that the stupid plonker was likely dead already.

_Look, there are area steps. So there’s a way in down there._

He eased himself down the steps. At the bottom was a door; he tried it cautiously. “Locked. An’ if I kick it in, they’ll hear me.” He leaned his cheek against the wood. “He’s been here, Rupert: I can smell him.”

_Really?_

“He’s been scared. He’s touched the other side of this door. Fuck! Where’s the back door, do you think?”

_You’d need to find the entry up the back; there’s probably a cut between some of the houses, but I can’t see which ones. Wait, Spike. Try next door.”_

“What?”

_Get in next door, go up as high as you can get, see if there are attics. This isn’t Edwardian, it’s Georgian, and the top floor will have been storage or servants’ quarters. You might be able to get in that way._

He sprang up the area steps and turned to the nexthouse, pressing bells randomly and ignoring the crackling intercom until a steady buzz told him that some impatient tenant had released the lock. There were too bloody many stairs and no lift. At the very top, he looked left and right.

_That side. The front door’s behind you._

He put on his pleasantest expression, summoned the glamour, and knocked firmly on the door.

“Yes?”

“Landlord’s inspection, love.”

“At this time of night?”

He shrugged dismissively. “Only time we’re sure of findin’ people home. We’ve been havin’ trouble with rats in the attic; you don’t want me to check, that’s yer own lookout, but you needn’t expect us to do anythin’ about the problem if you won’t let us look.”

She stepped back, shuddering. “What do you need to do?”

“I need you,” he said carefully, “to give me specific permission to come in and to go up into the crawl space through yer room. It’s just a look-see at the moment, but you have to give me permission.”

“Sure, yeah. Um, you got some ID?”

He fixed her with a stare, ramped the glamour up to eleven, and showed her a cigarette packet. She nodded. “Come in, then. Um, I don’t actually know where…”

He found an access hatch in her kitchen, and kicked his way up to it from her stool. Then he looked down into her upturned face. “Ta, love. There’s no sign of rats up here, none at all, an’ I wasn’t here longer than five minutes. Last you saw of me, I was knockin’ at the door on the other side of the landin’, O.K.? You heard me go back down the stairs ten minutes after that. Nothin’ to worry about, nothin’ to talk about, just the landlord’s inspection. You’re in the kitchen now because you wanted a cuppa.”

She smiled at him, looking a little confused, and nodded, turning away towards the kettle and the sink; he pushed the hatch back into place behind him.

_That is really a very useful skill._

“Ain’t it, though?” He was stretched out on the joists, ear to the access hatch of the next house. Then he eased the board up, and slipped through the gap. The stairs below were dark and silent, but he waited patiently until he was certain that nothing, alive or undead, was there. Each stair was tried carefully before he trusted it with his weight, and it took him a full five minutes to pass the open door on the second floor and the host of vampires beyond it. The fledge on guard in the kitchen had barely cut its fangs, and he had no difficulty in evading it and dodging around the corner that led to what was patently a wine cellar.

Locked. Not helpful. But there was a hatch in the door, and a minute with a knife — since when did he carry a knife?

 _Since I told you it was useful_.

“Wes?” It was no more than breathed into the dark but something shifted.

“Who’s there?” Wesley’s voice trembled despite his obvious attempt to keep it steady.

“Shhh! Keep the noise down. Me. Spike. An’ let me tell you, if _either_ of us gets out of this alive, you are _dead_ , boy. _What_ did we say about you not chasin’ this up all on your own?”

_Not now, Spike._

“Well, you were right. I hope it feels good,” muttered Wesley bitterly; Spike snarled.

_Not **now** , Spike. He’s whistling in the dark. Just get him **out** and you can tell him what we think about it afterwards. Can we get him past that vampire in the kitchen?_

“No. An’ there’s two at the front door, an’ no way could he get past the lot upstairs.”

“Who are you talking to?” whispered Wesley curiously.

“Never you mind. It’s goin’ to need somethin’…”

There was a crash and a roar upstairs; Wesley flinched and Spike swore, softly.

“Right. Listen, Pryce. Do you want to live?”

“I… what? Of course I… but what…? I don’t want to… Those vampires, they, they…”

“Just shut _up_ , willya? I _know_ what they intend, or I can guess. I _might_ be able to get you out alive. Genuinely alive, not undead. Not untouched, but alive and livin’ to be stupid another day. You won’t like what I do — I don’t like it much meself — but you’ll be alive. Bloody hell, I can’t believe I’m even thinkin’ about this.”

_Neither can I._

“Do you think it will work?”

“Do I think _what_ will work? You haven’t told me what you…”

“Not _you_ , dickhead. Wouldn’t trust _your_ opinion if you told me this was Saturday.”

_I_ _… have to say I’m not confident, but I don’t have a better plan. And there isn’t time to explain it: he’ll argue if you do. Just do it._

“Fuck! Pryce, come _here!_ ”He reached through the hatch and yanked Wesley close by his twisted tie, ripping at buttons.

“What are you…!”

“Shut _up!_ ” snarled Spike, game face on, fangs dropped. He struck, fast as a cobra, and Wesley yelped as a bright bead of blood bloomed below his collarbone. Spike let go of him with one hand, and shot his wrist free of the cuff of Giles’ jacket, biting his own flesh and lifting his head with his mouth bloodstained. Wesley yelped again as Spike dragged him closer, and licked at the puncture on his chest, mixing Wesley’s blood with his own. Wesley shook with terror; Spike shook with something else. “Watcher!”

“What!”

_I’m here. I’m here. Breathe through it, Spike._

“I don’t fuckin’…”

 _I **know**._ _But do it anyway. Breathe. In. Out. One. Two. One. Two. You can do this. We can do it. We are not at the mercy of the bloodlust. We don’t kill unless we must. Unless we choose._

“Watcher blood is… different.”

_I can tell. Strong stuff, is it? Was it like that_ _… I shouldn’t ask, should I?_

“You were too far gone already, an’ a good half o’ yours was one drug or another. He’s young an’ fit. Bloody hell, that hit hard.”

_All right now?_

Spike nodded wearily and pulled Wesley close again; Wesley struggled to no avail: Spike licked the blood away and then ran his tongue steadily over the puncture wounds, which closed, scabbed, healed, paled. There would be no scar. When he was satisfied that no mark remained, he let go.

“Pryce? Do up yer shirt. Straighten yer tie. What sort of fuckwit goes vampire huntin’ in a collar an’ _tie?_ ”

_Excuse me?_

“An’ you an’ all. Pryce! Fuck, they’re comin’, I can hear them. Listen, Pryce. If you want to live, then remember this: I’m comin’ to fetch you. You know, absolutely, not a shadow of a doubt in your head that I will be. You can tell them that I will be. You’re countin’ on it, an’ when I show, _fer fuck’s sake, be pleased to see me_. This is _not_ the time for the Duchess’s manners. You know what I did there. Now you have to convince them that I got you right under me thumb.”

He slipped towards a scullery door, out of the main thoroughfare; as the first vampire appeared from the kitchen Wesley heard the softest imaginable whisper.

“Or we’re both dead.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some dodgy knifework.

Dead, thought Wesley, seemed disturbingly likely; he had been utterly terrified before Spike appeared and he was still, although he rather thought that the reason for it had changed. He was scared of the vampires upstairs, certainly, but he was scared of the one hiding in the scullery behind him as well. He was scared of the immediate threat, and he was also scared of the future consequences. He knew what Spike had done.

He was a Pet. A vampire’s Pet.

Spike’s Pet.

He tried not to think about it — he tried not to think _at all_ , about anything, as he was dragged up the filthy staircase — but Watcher training was strong and he couldn't help it. He was a Pet. He was marked, as far as other vampires were concerned, as Spike’s property. They would assume that Spike fed from him and… and had sex with him. He had to convince them — and he was no sort of liar — that it was true. Spike had said… Spike had said that he had to be pleased to see him when he appeared; that meant that he had to act like… like… How on earth could he do it? How could he convince a group of hungry vampires that he believed that Spike would look after him? That he _wanted_ Spike to look after him? That Spike had him under the glamour to such an extent that he, a Watcher, would be a _willing_ Pet?

He couldn’t do it.

He had to.

He was no sort of liar. His father had always known when he was lying. So had Mr Giles.

He had to try.

Trying wouldn’t be good enough.

A hard hand slammed into his back, pushing him around a bend in the stairs; he flung out a hand to get his balance and his fingers met the shaped wood of the newel post. For some reason, something flicked at his memory; the turned wood reminded him of the little decorative urn that Spike had brought from America, the one with the broken seal and the not quite adequate contents. He hadn’t told _all_ the truth about that. Hadn’t lied but…

It’s all in knowing what not to say. Don’t tell a lie. Just don’t tell all the truth. If you lie, they’ll know. Tell the truth.

It hadn’t been a _lie_ , but it had definitely been deceit. He had deceived the Council. He had deceived his father. Deliberately. Faced with what the Council wanted, against what a vampire wanted, and an unapproved Slayer wanted, and an untrained witch and an unrecognised Watcher wanted, and what even he knew that Mr Giles would have wanted… he had sided against the Council and he had deceived them all, and he wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t the man he had been when he went to Sunnydale; he wasn’t even the man he had been when he came back. The Council thought that Mr Giles had subverted him, that it was Mr Giles’ fault that Wesley had, had, that his opinions were unsound and his behaviour unreliable. They thought that he might do _anything_ and it was Mr Giles’ fault. Wesley himself didn’t think Mr Giles had _ever_ thought that Wesley was capable of anything, and it was too late now to convince him, but… he wished he had.

He was thrust hard into what had once been a rather handsome dining room.

“This is the Watcher?”

No, really, it was too much. This was a vampire actually _dressed_ as a vampire, in the manner made famous by Christopher Lee, but without any of Christopher Lee’s class and style. He was overweight, with a double chin and pudgy fingers, and Wesley was deathly afraid of him. He looked desperately over his shoulder. There was a ripple of laughter around the room.

“What are you looking for, Watcher? Rescue?”

He snatched a breath. He knew what courage looked like in the face of unimaginable horrors: he’d seen Mr Giles face down Balthazar. He didn’t know if he could live up to that, but he was going to try.

“I’m looking for Spike.”

Whatever they had expected, it wasn’t that.

“Spike?”

A second vampire leaned to the fat man and whispered.

“William the Bloody? You’re looking for him?” There was a dismissive sniff. “He is not part of our Order. He does not come here.”

Wesley closed his eyes. “He’ll come for _me_.”

He flinched from the laughter that rolled around the room; it reminded him of the humiliating rituals imposed on the new bugs at his prep school.

“Why? Why would he do such a thing?”

He opened his eyes and tried for innocent conviction _because it was true, it wasn’t a lie._ “I’m his Pet.”

Some of the creatures laughed again; others did not. The fat man raised an eyebrow and a vampire behind Wesley set one hand on his shoulder and pulled his head to one side with the other, pressing its face to his throat and licking the skin slowly. He shuddered, sick with fear, and it shoved him forward dismissively.

“True, I think, but the binding is very recent.”

The fat man looked sideways. “You and you: guard the doors. Take others with you. William the Bloody is not to enter this house.”

“Bit late for that, Frankie.” Spike lounged insolently in the doorway. “You there, get yer hands off my Pet. I haven’t finished wi’ it.”

The vampire sneered and let its hands drop from Wesley’s shoulders. “From the smell, you haven’t even started. You haven’t fucked it, you haven’t bitten it…”

Spike smiled slowly; Wesley saw a flash of something that reminded him for some reason of Mr Giles in full dismissive mode. “Haven’t needed to. It’s my Pet, an’ I like the idea of having a pet Watcher that’s… willin’. Haven’t even put the glamour on it, an’ it still comes to me when I call. It can’t help itself.” He held out a hand. “Can you, Wes?”

It was his cue and he didn’t allow himself to hesitate for even the fraction of a second, walking straight forward, ignoring the vampire behind him, ignoring the fat man, moving to Spike as if he had never thought of doing anything else. If he didn’t speak, it wasn’t a lie. Spike’s hand closed on his wrist and there was the faintest imperceptible downward tug; he refused to think, but went to his knees and laid his cheek against Spike’s hip. Spike’s hand settled on his head hiding his face from the brood.

“How did you get in?” demanded another elderly vampire. “This house is denied to all not of our Order. The doors and windows are warded.”

Spike sniffed. “Are they? Could ha’ fooled me.”

The vampire went game face. _“How did you get here?”_

Spike slipped a finger under Wesley’s chin and turned his face upward, as if uninterested in the conversation. “Walked. Gotta say, Frankie, this isn’t the best area any more. Couldn’t find a cab willin’ to bring me this far out of town. Bit of a come down, innit? What time do the buses stop runnin’ around here?”

The fat man frowned. “You’re equivocating, William. How did you get in here?”

Spike smiled coldly. “Walked up those stairs, Frankie. Walked up the stairs. You got a baby biter at the area door, an’ two on the front door an’ two on the back, an’ not one of ’em saw me. You got a Heitem ward on the front door, and a Kvesk on the back, an’ a Demis on the scullery an’ the windows, an’ none of ’em kept me out, an’ none of ’em is showin’ a break. I suggest you think about that. I’m in, an’ you don’t know how I did it. I’m strong enough to do it, an’ I’m smart enough to do it wi’out you knowing. I’ve come for my Pet; I’m leavin’ with him, an’ you’re goin’ to let us go, an’ in future you’re goin’ to remember that he belongs to me and you’re goin’ to leave both of us alone.”

The fat man considered him for a moment. “You’ve been in America,” he observed slowly, “with the peculiar Slayer and… yes, and with the Watcher who went native. The word is that he’s dead?”

Spike nodded cautiously. “Died in his bed wi’ a smile on his face, too. Doesn’t happen to many Watchers.”

“Indeed. But I think that perhaps you have learned from him. My understanding is that he was… clever. That he had more than simple book-learning.”

“He was good at thinkin’ up ways out of difficulties,” agreed Spike.

“Such as how to pass through wards without breaking them?”

Spike looked innocent. “I couldn’t possibly say.”

Spike, Wesley realised, was doing precisely what Wesley had thought to do himself. He was telling the truth. These were old vampires, strong vampires, vampires with power over other vampires. These were vampires who would know if Spike was lying. The fat man looked down at him, and he quivered with terror.

“And this is yours.”

“This is mine.” Spike yanked at his hair, and Wesley rose uneasily to his feet. “Mine because I want it, an’ mine because it doesn’t want to say no. Do you, Wes?”

He was just quick enough to realise that Spike’s hand tugging at his neck was pulling him in for a kiss, and to fight down the instinctive refusal. Then Spike’s mouth was on his, cool and with a slight taste of _oh God_ no, _not_ actually blood, but the bitterness of cigarettes, and Spike’s hand settled heavily on his backside, pulling him close. He was being kissed by a vampire, by a man, by _Spike_ , and he had to make it look as if he liked it. He relaxed, deliberately, letting his knees soften and his head rock back to compensate for the fact that he was taller than Spike. He closed his eyes to block out the sight of the fat man, and kept them closed when Spike drew away with a lingering grope of his arse.

“The blood of a Watcher would be useful to the brood.”

“Catch yer own,” said Spike baldly. “This one is _mine_. I’m not sharin’.”

A dissolute-looking younger vampire sneered. “You’ll share if we tell you to share, peasant.”

“Peasant?” objected Spike, insulted. “ _Peasant?_ ’Scuse me, I’ve been a Londoner all me life.”

“Nonetheless,” agreed the fat man, calmly, “Watcher blood would be of great use to us.”

“What’s the Watcher doing here anyway?” asked the young one. “All very well saying it’s yours, but it’s not very well trained if it just walks away from you. We didn’t go looking for it — it walked in here of its own accord.”

Wesley opened his eyes in time to see Spike send him a fulminating glare. “An’ it’ll be sorry fer that later: I told it not to.”

Instantly, he knew it had been a mistake; the fat man smiled slowly. “So you _don’t_ have control over it. You know our motto, I think?”

Wesley at least did: _fay_ _çe que vouldras_ in the original; the same in more modern spellings later. From the way Spike stilled against him, Spike knew it too.

“And our will is that we shall have the Watcher.”

“Mine is that you won’t.”

There was a sudden flurry of movement and Wesley yelped as hard bony hands dragged him from Spike’s side and he fell backwards onto the table, his shirt tearing as the young vampire went for his throat. There was an odd sound and a _thunk_ and the young vampire screamed shortly, pushing off Wesley and turning horrified eyes to his right hand.

A knife stood up from the back of it, pinning it to the wood of the table. Spike sauntered forward and yanked it free, none too carefully, inspecting the blade and then wiping it on the young vampire’s sleeve before folding it shut and returning it to his pocket. “I learned _that_ from Rupert — from the dead Watcher,” he said conversationally. “Tell your friend to leave my property _alone_ , Frankie.”

“Wharton, at least _try_ to behave like a gentleman,” reproved the fat man, and Wesley fought down a ridiculous urge to giggle hysterically. “William, that goes for you too: a knife is no weapon for a well bred man.”

Spike shrugged. “Never claimed to be one.”

The young vampire’s snarl was high-pitched and vicious. “I demand satisfaction!”

Spike sniffed. “You’re not my type.”

There was laughter: he was winning them back, Wesley saw: Wharton, it seemed, was not popular. The fat man smiled.

“It would be… interesting, though. You may fight for the Watcher. The winner keeps him.”

Spike’s eyes narrowed. “Fight for him.”

“I think so, yes. You against Wharton. The rest of us,” and his voice took on a warning tone, “will not interfere. If you win, you may take your Pet and go, and no one here will prevent you, nor will we attempt in future to take your Pet from you.”

Spike frowned. “An’ no comeback when I dust yer friend.”

The fat man inclined his head slowly. “No comeback _if_ you win.”

Spike slipped his hand into his pocket and produced the knife again; the fat man smiled evilly. “Oh, I think not. Wharton is the injured party; he may choose the weapon.”

Spike straightened. “’Scuse me? He was the one tryin’ to take my Pet and _he’s_ the injured party?”

The fat man shook his head. “Wharton is our host and you have gate-crashed a private party, you and your Pet both, and you attacked him with a knife. He may choose the weapon.”

Wharton’s smile was as evil as the fat man’s had been; he held out his hand, and a fledge scuttled out, coming back with a polished sword. The vampire inspected it, thrust it casually through the body of the fledge, which squealed and staggered to one side, and strode forward. There was no mark on his hand where Spike’s knife had been; this had been a young man, but it was no young vampire. In fact, if it had been who Wesley thought, it was actually older than the fat… than Dashwood.

“Clear that table out of the way,” instructed Dashwood. “Wilkes, give William your sword. We’ll see him start fair.”

“Fer whose value of ‘fair’?” muttered Spike, but he accepted the sword. “Never really learned to fight wi’ one of these, just picked it up as I went along.”

“Perhaps you should let your Pet fight,” sniggered the old vampire who had spoken of wards. “I believe that Watchers are taught swordplay.”

Spike shrugged out of his leather jacket and handed it to Wesley, without looking at him. “I believe they are,” he agreed, and something in his tone startled Wesley. It didn’t sound like Spike; the way he rolled his shoulders and flexed his fingers didn’t look like Spike. The way he tried the edge of the sword and nodded — sharp enough to take a vampire’s head and reduce him to dust — didn’t look like Spike.

The way he settled the sword into his hand — his _left_ hand — and came forward, eyes on Wharton, didn’t look _at all_ like Spike.

It looked like Mr Giles.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter in which it all goes wrong.

For several seconds the only sounds in the room were Pryce’s breathing, loud and harsh, and the thump of the sword against the tattered carpet. Every face was turned towards the tumble of dust settling over the shiny blade; then, slowly, the vampires turned to stare at Spike, who gripped Wesley’s sleeve and drew him close. He had no particular faith that they were going to get out more or less alive — Francis Dashwood had promised them safe passage, but honour wasn’t precisely something that stuck with a vampire. He might hold to it — Spike didn’t get the impression that Dashwood would have been particularly bothered which of them killed the other, because either a dead Spike or a dead Wharton would have been satisfactory, with only both of them dusted being preferable — and he might not. It depended how much he really wanted a captured Watcher.

_A lot, I think. If_ _… if it all goes wrong, kill Wesley. Don’t let him…_

“Be turned or taken, I know.”

Dashwood snapped out of his shock. “I beg your pardon?”

Spike shook his head; he _had_ to learn not to speak to Rupert out loud. Dashwood considered him impassively.

“What _are_ you? You aren’t… entirely… one of us, I think. You feel… wrong.”

He put on his most innocent expression. “Maybe ’cause I’ve been hangin’ around in America wi’ Watchers an’ Slayers an’ werewolves an’ the like.”

Dashwood shook his head, slowly. “There’s something… more. _What_ are you?”

Fuck, the baby blues weren’t cutting it. The brood was beginning to close in. They weren’t going to be let go.

 _They’re a little scared of you, Spike: they don’t know how you got in, and they really didn’t expect you to kill Wharton. Keep them on the back foot; they think you’re dangerous but they can’t work out_ how _dangerous._

“Where is Dr Thompson?”

There was a shift in the bodies surrounding them. “Who?” he thought frantically.

_Thomas Thompson. Society doctor of varying success: some of his patients lived. I don’t know much about him._

“Thomas, what is this… creature?”

Thompson inspected Spike from several angles, before smiling coldly and whispering a spell.

_Damn. I hoped nobody here would know that one._

“It has a soul, my lord. A souled vampire.”

_Whatever you do, don’t tell them it’s me; if they think they have a chance at **two** Watchers, we’re right up shit creek._

Yeah, he’d kind of worked that one out for himself. Pryce shook with surprise against his side, but managed to keep silent; Dashwood’s face darkened with suspicion. “And the Watcher?”

Spike answered before Thompson could be involved any further. “What I said. He’s my Pet.”

“And that will be why you have neither bedded him nor bitten him. I see. He’s your Pet, or you’re his?”

Well, he hadn’t even thought of that as a possibility.

_Don’t waste your time: it wouldn’t work._

“He’s mine. An’ we’ll be goin’ now, on account of we’ve — I’ve — won the fight.” It had been exhilarating: Wharton had been a more than competent swordsman. He just hadn't been one for very _long_.

There was a shift of the bodies around him; several of the vampires had gone game face. Dashwood continued to regard them impassively; Spike had more sense than to move, or allow Wesley to move. Presently Dashwood raised one hand and waved the others back.

That looked good.

But Dashwood smiled.

That didn’t.

“Hold him.”

And he was too slow, too slow, because he thought that they meant to take Pryce and they didn’t, or only incidentally. One of them pinned the Watcher’s arms and held him still, but there were four or five of them attached to Spike’s own limbs, and Dashwood approaching, so close that he struggled to focus. He felt his own game face slip into place… damn, that was what Dashwood had seen. He’d been so anxious not to interfere with the fight — it was one thing taking advice from Rupert; it was quite another allowing him to run the show, and he had thought that the last thing Rupert needed during a fight with an unfamiliar weapon, against an unfamiliar opponent, in an unfamiliar location, and while wearing an unfamiliar body, was a back seat driver — that he hadn’t thought that he _should_ have had fangs showing, and of course, it wouldn’t have occurred to Rupert.

_Well, no._

He struggled, impotently, and they pinned him, while Dashwood turned his attention to Pryce, who fought a little on his own account and who kept his face turned away.

_He knows about the glamour._

“If Dashwood’s goin’ to take him, he’d be better to give in to the glamour an’ make it easy on himself. I’m sorry, Rupert. I didn’t see what they meant to do.”

_I don’t think we’re seeing it yet. And don’t apologise: make no mistake, this was Wesley’s cock-up, and I’m afraid that he’ll pay heavily for it._

“An’ so will we.”

_I fear so. Spike, this has been_ _…_

“Yeah, it has.”

Pryce was fighting hard, but it was pointless; it only took another half minute for Dashwood to have him gasping and then stilling as the glamour took effect.

“Now, Watcher. William the Bloody says you are his Pet.”

“Yes,” whimpered Pryce.

“How long have you been his?”

Pryce twisted again, and the muscles in his jaw bulged as he tried to resist, but then he gasped. “Less than a month.”

_Oh, well **done** , Wesley._

“He’s not such a plonker as he looks, is he?”

_He is **such** a poor liar. Much better to tell the truth such that they hear the lie._

“He has not fed from you.”

Wesley hesitated again but presumably he could hear no danger in the question that was no question, and in any event it had been said before and Spike hadn’t denied it. “No.”

“Or taken you.”

Wesley’s shoulders twisted with the effort, and then he said sulkily, “Not yet.”

_If we get out of this, remind me to pay as much attention to what Wesley doesn’t say as to what he does._

“Ah. Any other man?”

“No!” It was snapped out, and one of the other vampires sniggered.

“Woman?”

“Yes.”

Dashwood looked thoughtful — and amused. “Have you _wanted_ a man, Watcher?”

The strain showed in lines of desperation on his face.

“Tell me.”

Wesley sobbed once, his eyes shut. Dashwood leaned closer, lover-like. “Tell me. _Tell_ me.”

The words were torn out, one at a time, from between his teeth.

“Not… one… I could get.”

Dashwood made a faint sound of disappointment. “It would have been better if you had never even thought of such a thing.” His smile was cruel. “Better for us, that is. We shall have your Master deal with that, and we shall have him feed.” He turned to the doctor and indicated Spike. “Thompson? Can you impose an Compulsion on him? Will the soul prevent it?”

Thompson shook his head. “If anything, my lord, the soul will strengthen it. If I may advise, my lord, a Triple Coercion would be best, that is, if your lordship has… if you can think of a third requirement.”

Dashwood considered; then he smiled again. “The Pet was disobedient, I think you mentioned,” he said conversationally to Spike. Then he nodded at the vampire behind Spike, who drew his head steadily back until his whole throat was exposed. He kept his eyes open, allowing himself to show all the contempt he felt, waiting for the fangs, but it was a claw that bit into his flesh. He convulsed, fighting as Thompson spoke some word of power; he saw his own blood on Dashwood’s hand, glowing with the strength of the spell as Thompson imposed it, and then felt Dashwood’s fingers again as his own blood bit his tattered flesh.

And then the wound closed and sealed, and he quivered with the power of an uncompleted spell within him.

Dashwood gripped his chin coldly.

“Take your Pet, William the Bloody. Go with your Pet. None here shall stand in your way. But on the Triple Coercion I bid you: by dawn you shall complete it.” He dropped his hand, and Spike felt the spell throb within him, and felt Rupert shift dangerously. Dashwood laughed softly. “And we shall see what a souled vampire does, for your soul won’t allow you to harm, will it? But the Coercion will force you to it, and we shall see. We shall see. Watcher blood is… potent, and once you taste it properly, I think your soul will be in deep peril, for you will want it all, and if you take it, he will die.”

He coughed abruptly as Dashwood’s hand dropped, and beside him, Pryce shook off the grip of the other vampire and shifted a little towards Spike. Dashwood glanced at him, and then returned his gaze to Spike, gesturing to the others to let him go.

“I compel thee, by the Power of the Word and by the Issue of the Blood and by the Strength of the Brood on thee, and on thy soul.” He reached for Pryce, and Spike, fast as only fear and fury could be, slammed his hand away. Dashwood laughed again. “Not willing to have me make _him_ willing? You could be right… It will be more entertaining — more entertaining for _us_ — if he is not. You will force him, William, and if you do not force him by the strength of your body, you will compel him by the strength of your will, and either one will touch you in your soul.

“He is your Pet? Make him so. Make him a proper Pet, William. Beat him. Bite him. Bed him. And all of them by dawn. If you do not, the pain will drive you mad. And if you do… if you do, William, what will that do to you and your soul?”

They stared belligerently at each other; Spike gave a snort of unamused laughter.

“Pryce will be willin’. He’s a twit but he’s my Pet an’ he’s not goin’ to see me suffer for the want of somethin’ he could do.” From the corner of his eye, he saw Wesley nod.

 _Spike, shut **up**. Wesley, you shut up too — oh bugger, he can’t hear me. Neither of you knows when to keep your mouth **shut**_.

Dashwood gave that creepy smile again. “But you have a soul, William — a pure thing. And your soul will know that the Watcher does not desire you and that his consent is no consent at all, but merely duty.

“Let them go.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spike being a bit annoyed.

_Well, that’s a bit of a bugger, isn’t it?_

“Yeah, literally,” agreed Spike, grabbing Pryce’s sleeve and setting off at a brisk jog.

“I’m sorry…”

“Not _you_ , Pryce. You just keep yer mouth _shut_ for a bit while the grown-ups work out what we’re goin’ to _do_.”

“I… he…”

“Yeah, I’m sure, but it isn’t helpful. In fact, very little of what you’ve done tonight has been helpful. What would be helpful would be for you to _shut up_ while we… while I think of how we’re goin’ to get out of this.” He started to run again, dragging the Watcher behind him. “An’ we’re startin’ on the Tube.”

_Good idea. Changing?_

“Yeah.” And they did change; at every station through which more than one line ran, they scuttled from platform to platform, off one train and onto another, sometimes going back the way they had come, once running up the stairs and then going back down on the escalator, onto the same platform. Pryce tried to argue once or twice until Spike threatened to use the glamour to make him do as he was bloody _told_ ; after the awkward ten minutes when Spike dragged him through a service tunnel, past a variety of signs saying No Entry This Means You Bugger Off What Do You Think You’re Doing In Here, he was too far out of breath to argue at all. By the time they came up the last flight of steps, he was staggering, but Spike refused to allow him a moment’s respite before marching him briskly along the street, and into the lobby of his block of flats. Then he waited impatiently for him to fumble his keycard out of his pocket, and for the first time, followed him into the lift. They were silent going up, apart from Pryce’s wheezing; at the door of the flat Pryce cast him an uncomfortable look, opened the door and shot inside like a rabbit running from a ferret. He turned, and his jaw dropped as Spike stepped after him.

“Don’t you know _anythin’?_ You’re my Pet. You can’t keep me out. I don’t need an invitation no more.”

**_Any_ ** _more._

“An’ _you_ can shut up too.”

“I didn’t…”

“Not _you_.”

“Then who…” Pryce’s question was cut off into a squeak as Spike’s hands closed on the lapels of his by now rather mangled jacket.

“ _Now_ , Pryce, _now_ you can start explainin’ precisely what you thought you were _doin’_ , and why you were chasin’ about after the Hellfire Club, when we… when I _told_ you not to do anythin’ of the sort! _Now_ … who knows you went?”

Pryce shook his head. “Nobody,” he said, in the tone of somebody who thought it would placate. Spike found himself elbowed aside and his voice taken over.  

“Nobody? _Nobody?_ You had no back-up? You went to investigate, which I _expressly_ told you not to do, without so much as leaving word for somebody so that if you came back, all the gods forbid, turned, there might be some possibility of them keeping a vampire Watcher out? You went gallivanting across London without a Plan B? Bloody hell, I know the Council taught you nothing, but did you learn nothing from _me?_ ”

“Um, remember he doesn’t know you’re there. He thinks that’s me — you’ve confused him.”

_What? Oh. Yes. Sorry._

“You don’t get to tell me what to do!”

Spike shook him viciously. “Do now, boy. I do now. You belong to me. An’ we got a problem; we got several problems, an’ if you say one word, one _word_ about my grammar…”

Pryce struggled. “Why would I say anything about your grammar?”

“For the love of blood, _not you!_ ”

Pryce, bewildered, was silent; Spike bit down on his rage and looked around the flat. It was as ugly as anything he had seen in a long time: a square single room containing a double bed and a couple of flatpack wardrobes at one end, and at the end by the window, a small deal table covered with papers and with two uncomfortable looking wooden chairs underneath, a two person couch, plainly not new and patterned in a style popular in the Seventies facing a cheap stand with a cheaper television on top, and around a corner, two unpainted doors leading, presumably, to a small bathroom and smaller kitchen. He knew property prices were bloody ridiculous, but even his crypt was better than this.

“Right then. This unsupported trip, what was it supposed to achieve?”

“I thought… I wanted to know… I meant to find out what they were doing. How many there were in the brood, what they wanted, why they…”

“Pryce, they’re a _brood_. They’re _vampires_. They don’t _have_ reasons most of the times. An’ did it not occur to you that you could ask me, an’ I might know? Or I might know how to find out wi’out you puttin’ yerself in danger? I didn’t realise you were gettin’ yer knickers in a twist about this; I thought you were just bein’ a bit nosy. I didn’t realise you were goin’ to be so _completely buck-stupid!_ An’ now look what you’ve done! Now we’re in a total mess!”

“I, I appreciate that it didn’t go well, and, and I’m grateful for your help. I do,” and Pryce swallowed hard, “I do understand that the situation that we find ourselves in now is, is complicated.”

Spike felt his eyes widen. “Complicated.”

“I do understand that we, that you, that I…”

“Yeah. We do. We are. It’s _complicated_. I’ve got a Pet that I didn’t want. I’ve got a magical Compulsion on me that I didn’t want. You heard what Frankie said I had to do, didn’t you?”

Pryce looked away.

“Beat, bite, bed, he said. An’ none o’ that does you any good. You ever been beaten by a vampire?” He felt his… his tenant shift uneasily. “You ever heard what Angelus did to Rupert? That was what Frankie was thinkin’ I should do to you. You didn’t turn up until after that escapade, but you must have heard about it?”

_He did. He put it down as a lack of care on my part coupled with exaggeration until Xander gave him the detail one night, with Oz nodding in the background. They didn’t know I was there and could hear them; they found me in the stacks after Wesley left, having a flashback. I knocked Xander down when he tried to coax me out, and_ _… well, never mind. But he did know. I don’t know how those two convinced him, but they did._

“We’re talkin’ broken bones here, Watcher. Missin’ teeth. That’s the way a vampire disciplines a disobedient Pet.” He watched Pryce swallow hard. “An’ then I gotta feed. You saw when I took you as my Pet - it nearly put me on the floor, an’ that was about two teaspoonfuls. Watcher blood is strong stuff. There’s a reason we want it, Pryce, an’ it’s not fer the sake o’ yer pretty face. Two minutes of feedin’ from a Watcher will have a young vampire out of his head wi’ lust an’ fightin’ rage. The reason a Watcher who gets bitten ends up dead rather than turned? The reason Watchers don’t end up as Pets? I think you’re the first, Pryce, because _we can’t resist the blood_. We can’t _stop_ feedin’. The only reason Angelus didn’t feed from Rupert, didn’t let Dru or me feed, was that he wanted information, an’ he knew that once he started to feed, Rupert was as good as dead an’ there would be nothin’ else to get from him, an’ he’d have to fight Dru an’ me as well. If the Slayer hadn't turned up when she did, an’ Harris to do the rescue...

“We’ll drain a Watcher, like a wino wi’ a bottle o’ gut-rot. I told you, if vampires catch a human an’ feel like playin’ wi’ it, they can keep it alive and sufferin’ for days. But a Watcher? Every vampire in the place will want some of it, an’ they’ll come an’ fight for a share. That’s why Frankie sent us away rather than keepin’ us there so that he could watch. Trust me, he would have liked nothin’ better than to watch me fuck you an’ feed, but it would have been absolute carnage in his brood. Even the fledges would have come, an’ the old vampires would have killed the fledges while the fledges had their fangs in you, sooner than give up a mouthful of the blood. You’d die, an’ you’d die _hard,_ wi’ the brood fightin’ over you.

“Now I’m not a fledge, an’ Frankie knows that I must be strong because I _did_ manage to take you as me Pet, an’ you’re still alive — but he’s countin’ on the fact that once I feed properly, you’re either dead or as near as makes no difference. An’ _then_ there’s the sex. Wi’ you, as I said, dead - which even I think is a bit icky - or nearly dead. There are vampires who like that. Frankie’s countin’ on that too. So yeah, Watcher, _complicated_ is about what it is!”

He was shouting, and he could see the Watcher shrinking; he didn’t stop. “Then let’s add in the soul thing: because you’re dead, in all likelihood, at my fangs, an’ not easily, an’ I’ve got a soul to account for so where does that leave me? If I do it, you die an’ I get the weight of it on my soul. An’ if I don’t, I go mad, an’ there aren’t so many mad vampires that don’t end up dead quite quickly. An’ then where are we? An’ all that is because you were so bloody certain that _you knew best!_ I’d ha’ thought by now that you’d ha’ got the idea that you weren’t right up there wi’ the big thinkers!”

He was shaking with rage and with the effect of the Compulsion which was already making itself felt: he would have to act on it soon. “Now fortunately for you, Mr Shite-For-Brains, there’s stuff Frankie doesn’t know. I think we can get out of this wi’ neither of us dead. I _think_ so. Because he didn’t know enough about the soul I’ve got, he thought it would have kittens at the idea o’ me doin’ any of that stuff, an’ I think… I think maybe it won’t.”

_I won’t. I don’t **like** it, you understand, but, well, I know about choosing the least unacceptable option._

“But we are still in the shit afterwards, because vampires are…” he choked, looking for the right words. “We’re like the soddin’ _Mafia_ when it comes to disrespect. Now I was countin’ on that when I claimed you as me Pet, because I’d marked you as mine an’ the traditions say that I’m entitled to kill anybody who tries to take you from me. Trouble is, Frankie’s been around a good long time, an’ he’s,” he felt his mouth twist as he accepted the bitterness of it, “he’s stronger than me. If he’d wanted you that badly, he’d have had you, an’ I’d be dead. But he wasn’t _absolutely_ sure what was goin’ on an’ once I’d dusted Wharton he wasn’t inclined to take the chance that it was somethin’ he couldn’t control. Now he’s got me under this soddin’ Compulsion. I’ve lost, Watcher. He won. An’ _because_ he won, I’m goin’ to spend the next year, probably, killin’ fledges who want to take me, an’ take my status. It’s like a bloody cowboy film, an’ suddenly I’m John Wayne, an’ I don’t like it much, because some o’ them won’t be fledges, they’ll be vampires who want a place fer themselves here. I’ve got to look out fer meself all the time, I can’t live off my reputation, because _Frankie beat me_. An’ that’s down to you doin’ somethin’ stupid, Watcher, innit? Then you add on that I’ve got a Pet Watcher, an’ some o’ them will be thinkin’ that if I’ve done it, it can’t be that difficult, an’ they’ll be lookin’ to take you away from me. So I don’t just have to look out fer meself, Watcher, I have to look out fer you as well. _Because of your bad judgment._ ” The Compulsion was humming in his blood.

“Oh,” breathed Pryce, in belated understanding. “So all that with the Tube stations… You said it was to throw off the pursuit. But you really think they’ll…”

He dug his fingernails into his palms with the effort of not simply swinging a fist into Pryce’s face. “They’ll be lookin’ for you, on yer own account and as a way of strikin’ at me. I’m hopin’ that if they didn’t follow us… By dawn, it’ll probably have died down a bit. If they haven’t found us by dawn, we’ve got a breathin’ space because they’ll think that either I did the dirty an’ my soul will be givin’ me gyp, an’ you’ll be dead or as good as, an’ not worth chasin’ any more, or else I did it an’ my soul _isn’t_ givin’ me gyp which means that I’m more powerful than Frankie an’ they should back off an’ leave us alone.” He stopped to think it through. “Yeah, that second one would be better, because there’s a third possibility, which is that I didn’t do it, an’ I’m crazy, in which case you’re either dead anyway or you’re a free agent again wi’ no protector an’ in that case you probably _are_ worth chasin’. But meanwhile, the last thing you want is them knowin’ where you live.” He was shaking with a combination of emotions, none of which a vampire should feel. This half-baked idiot had nearly got them both killed — would certainly have got himself killed had Spike not gone after him. Now they were in a mess which might yet make death the better option. He had always thought that Watchers were arsewipes to a man and woman…

_Thank you._

Well, all right, Rupert had more wit than most of them, but this bird-brained excuse for a man…

“Spike?” Pryce looked plain terrified, and his voice shook. “I… That… It wouldn’t be hard to find out.”

_Oh, good lord, don’t tell me he’s_ _… It’s absolutely against Council regulations for_ **_precisely_ ** _this reason. **Don’t** tell me he’s_ _…_

“I’m in the phone book.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody knew Dead!Giles could do that. Spike being violent again.

He caught himself — Rupert caught him — with one hand wrapped in Pryce’s lapels again, and the other arm cocked back ready to smash into the _stupid_ tosser’s face; he forced himself to let go, but it was too much: taking a Pet was a powerful thing and it was well known that the first 24 hours could be difficult — difficult for the Pet, at least; not all of them survived the experience, and this was a _Watcher_. Every demon instinct was telling him that he had to discipline his Pet, right this _instant,_ even without the complication of the Compulsion. He growled, fangs dropping, and Pryce made a tiny sound of fear; Rupert dug in, hanging desperately onto whatever was _Spike_ , keeping it ahead of the demon.

_He’s human, he’s human, don’t break him. We’re better than that. He’s a damned irritating little twit and I know he deserves_ _… Spike!_ **_Spike_ ** _!_

“Yeah,” he said thickly. “He does deserve. An’ he’s goin’ to get.” He spun Pryce with demonic ease, forcing him forward to the ugly couch and pushing his shoulders until the man was doubled over the back of it. “Don’t you _dare_ move until I say you can, you _stupid_ git.” His hands went to his waist, clumsy with rage and frustration, dragging his belt free of the denim loops, tugging as it snagged on his _Rupert’s_ leather jacket, doubling it and shaking it until the loop swung easily.

**_Spike!_ **

“You can’t tell me he hasn’t asked for it. He’s my Pet an’ I can do what I like…”

_You_ _… We’re better than that! Spike, you don’t know what it will do! That’s not what you saved him for! I won’t let you!_

“You won’t let me? _You_ won’t let _me?_ You’re livin in my head like some sort o’ _lodger_ an’ you think you can stop me?” He swung the belt, but it bounced off the couch as Pryce struggled; he yanked the man’s arm half up his back, immobilising him. “He’s goin’ to get a bloody hidin’, the hidin’ he’s been askin’ for as long as I’ve known him, an’ then,” dangerously, “he’s goin’ to learn what a Pet does an’ he’s goin’ to do it.”

**_No!_ **

“Yes. We’ll get him quiet an’ on his knees, an’ I’ll show you somethin’ about…”

**_No! Listen_ ** _to me, Spike. Listen. That isn’t what you want. It isn’t. It’s the Compulsion._

“Pryce belongs to me now and I’ll do what I fuckin’ like wi’ him!”

_He belongs to you because you rescued him. Why did you save him if you were going to break him afterwards?_

His fangs were fully extended, his face ridged, his eyes glowing; the human in front of him was sobbing with fear and exertion, fighting desperately and fruitlessly. Spike liked that: it made him hard.

_“_ Mine. You heard Frankie: mine to beat, bite an’ bed.”

_Yours. And therefore also mine, and I say we shall not harm him. Whatever we have to do, we can do it without force._

He roared. The voice in his head was relentless.

_Rape, Spike? You, a souled vampire? Again?_

“He’s my Pet! I can do…”

_You can do this. You **can**. But do you want to?_

He felt the wash of Rupert’s emotions flicking past him like the zoetropes of his childhood; the picture of Angelus came with a wash of remembered pain and present fear that Spike would do something comparable. There was nothing in it that he didn’t know, that he hadn’t seen — he had been there, of course he had seen it — but now he _felt_ it, _felt_ the agony both physical and mental, _felt_ the despair.

_And I can feel you too. I know what you did. I know what you tried to do._

The picture in his head was vivid. She had fought him off. She had fought.

_Wesley’s fighting. He’s not willing, Spike. Not like this. This isn’t what we do. Out. Out while we still can. Get out. **Get out!**_

His hand opened and the leather slipped from it; the door slammed and his head resounded with the noise. He crashed from wall to wall as he leaped down the concrete stairs and into the night; Rupert drove him from the door, controlling him, forcing him to run, and then easing away when he did run. Rupert’s grip held him facing away until he stopped fighting it and _accepted_ , accepted the control. Obeyed it. Then there was no more than a touch on him, riding with him through the rage and fear, turning him again and again as he ran, always away from the crowded streets, away from the humans with their heartbeats and their breath and their life. Away. He ran away, until the light touch became firmer. _Steady now_ , it seemed to say. _No need to run._

He was shaking when he came to himself. He walked, mechanically, until he could walk no further, stopping when he came to a low wall overlooking water.

“Where the hell are we?”

_Maida Vale. Little Venice, to be precise._

He parked his bum on the parapet, and lit a cigarette, more for something to do with his shaking hands than because he wanted it.

_You may not want it but I do; I could do with a drink, too._

“That was… You took over. You took my body. I didn’t know you could do that.”

_I did it earlier, to fight Philip Wharton._

“Yeah, but I _let_ you. I didn’t know you could just _do_ it. Just… take over wi’out me havin’ a say in it.” It was bitter at the back of his throat.

_I couldn’t let you harm Wesley just because of Dashwood._

They were silent for all of that cigarette and half of the next.

“What right have you to stop me? It’s _my_ body.”

_It’s my soul._

“You weren’t so picky when you were demon raisin’ back in the day,” he snarled, flinging the cigarette end into the canal and setting off again, walking fast, shoulders hunched against he didn’t quite know what.

_I’m aware of that._

There was somebody at the corner ahead, and he was hungry. He flung that fact belligerently into the void. Hunger. _Hunger_ , and he would have it sated _._ He was rough with her, denying her the glamour, denying her the ease as she sobbed with fear.

Rupert said nothing; the blood filled his mouth and Rupert said nothing. Her pulse throbbed against his mouth and Rupert said nothing. He swallowed, feeling her quiver weakly.

Rupert said nothing. Spike was deafened by it.

He pulled away, and licked her throat; the ease tickled his tongue as he healed the small wound and calmed the girl. “Come on, bird, let’s find you a cab. Last bus’ll be long gone an’ you should be at home in yer bed. You’ll feel like shit tomorrow — ring in sick an’ tell ’em you’ve got flu. You’ll be fine in a couple of days.”

He pretended that he wasn’t eased himself by the sensation of Rupert’s approval. He walked again, circling round now towards Pryce’s flat, and knowing that Rupert knew that he was doing it.

“That Compulsion is still there, Rupert. We don’t act on that, we’re in the shit at dawn, all of us, Frankie said. Do you think it’s true?”

_I don’t know._

“You didn’t stop me feedin’.”

_You need to feed. You scared her but you didn’t kill her and you didn’t do her a permanent harm. I thought that if you were going to have to feed from Wesley, I would have a better chance of controlling the blood lust if we weren’t fighting genuine hunger as well. Spike, I don’t want to be_ _… I’m not trying to be some sort of Disney conscience for you. I’m not hanging on your shoulder telling you what the right thing is to do. If you want to go back now and kill Wesley…_

“Yeah? What’ll you do? You’ll let me?”

_I_ _… don’t know. I honestly don’t._

They… _he_ walked on.

_I_ _… wondered if… I wondered if you would come to wish that you hadn’t taken me in. There are ways for you to evict me._

He walked another half mile. “I don’t want to evict you. This is… Sometimes this is hard, you know, Rupert? It’s not like I expected. ’Cept, I suppose, I didn’t really expect… I didn’t know what to expect.” He thought about that a moment. “Don’t suppose you did either. It’s probably not any easier fer you.”

_I think it’s not, no. Spike, I’m grateful: you do know that? But I’m struggling sometimes because I don’t know how far it’s right — how far I can interfere. Autonomy is_ _…_

He grunted, and kept walking. Rupert said no more, until Spike couldn’t bear it. “I get you about the Disney conscience. That bloody cockroach always irritated the hell out of me — yeah, I know they said it was a cricket but it looked to me like a cockroach. But Rupert, you can’t hold back. I don’t want you holdin’ back. If you’re goin’ to live in my head, it’s only goin’ to work if you’re honest… if we’re honest wi’ each other. If we can find a way to disagree. I just didn’t know that you could do _that_.”

_I told you, neither did I, and I don’t know if it was something I should have done. This is_ _… as you say, it’s different, and it’s only going to work… we still need to find out how it’s going to work. I suppose it’s like being married: there are more things you can say without them being a serious issue, but the other ones, the unsayable things, are much worse. The effect of saying them, I mean._

He sniggered, he couldn’t help himself. “Never thought I’d be married at all, and _really_ never thought I’d marry a Watcher.” He felt Rupert’s amusement.

_Can we go and tell the Council that one of their senior Watchers has married a vampire?_

“Let’s do it, just to see their faces. Let’s tell the old ones that I’ve got _two_ pet Watchers… Oh, shit.”

_Oh, good lord, that takes us back to Wesley, doesn’t it?_

Down with the stick. “Yeah, I reckon it does. An’ dawn, which is a good hour closer than it was. Just as well it’s winter, innit? What… You wouldn’t let me do it before.”

_I couldn’t find_ _… you weren’t listening. That’s what I mean, I suppose, about if you want to kill Wesley. I wasn’t… I don’t know what I would do if_ **_Spike_ ** _wanted to kill him, but I didn’t think that you did. I thought it was the Compulsion and the demon._

“They don’t affect you, then? Or is it just that you can tell the difference?”

_I can feel them, but no, they aren’t_ _… I don’t know if they can overcome me or not. I think… I’m afraid that they... It was an effort, a major effort, to hold them off, but nothing to what they were doing to you. I think… I think that they’ll get_ **_you_ ** _if we don’t find a way around it, and I’m not sure that I can hold you off that way again. Not now that you know how I did it. I think that_ _… I think that we must do_ **_something_ ** **.** _I think we have some choices, more choices than Dashwood intended, because I’m not the, I’m not the sort of soul he thought you had — but we still need to placate the Compulsion._

Spike turned the last corner. Wesley’s tower block loomed above him.

_Over there, Spike. The all-night Tesco. If we’re going back to Wesley’s, we’ll need supplies._


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wesley being thinky. It’s about bloody time.

He still didn’t understand what had happened. Oh, he understood the first part. He understood that well enough. He had screwed everything up again. Nothing new there, Wesley. As usual he had had the best intentions, and what did he know about good intentions? He had thought that the Dashwood brood, the Hellfire brood was something that would bear investigation, and he had been right. As far as it went, he had done a good piece of research and come to some valid conclusions.

And then he had buggered it up. The _other_ half of his conclusions had been wrong. He had decided that the brood wasn’t dangerous and that a single Watcher would be able to come upon them un-noticed, and watch them, and come back with a report. He might as well admit it: he had wanted to impress the Council with his, his, his maturity, his capability. His knowledge. His skill.

It hadn’t occurred to him that the vampire telling him not to do it might be speaking from practical experience.

It had been a humiliatingly short time before he had been captured, disarmed so that even the option of killing himself was taken from him, and told, in taunting detail, what the (short) rest of his life would involve. It hadn’t sounded good.

Then the vampire had come and had… not bitten him exactly, well, yes, bitten him, but not, it had, he was, they did...

It had made him into its Pet. Spike had bitten him _enough_ to make him into a Pet, and now he could feel his pulse in his wrist and his throat and… and it was irritating him because it wouldn’t _stop._ Not that he wanted his heartbeat to stop but he wanted to stop being aware of it, because he didn’t want to think about _why_ he was aware of it and about all the places he could feel it.

 _All_ the places.

Then there had been the confrontation, and the fight, and he had thought they were going to get away, and then Dashwood had discovered that there was something odd about Spike and he had known that they were not. His mind side-stepped the terror he had felt, doubled and redoubled by the dashing of the earlier hope, and chased after the oddity. Spike had a _soul?_ He had known that there had been _something_ different about the vampire, had wondered what it was, had read a little, chased a few clues, discreetly because somehow he had thought that the Council would be better with Spike _not_ brought to their attention, but nothing had come to him. He had never thought of a _soul_.

It had to be admitted, he didn’t really know what difference it would make. He knew that the difference between Angel and Angelus was… extreme, but he hadn’t seen anything in Spike to suggest that degree of, of, of… Where had the vampire _got_ a soul? Why? Given all he knew about Angel, it couldn’t be the same sort of thing, because everybody knew that Angel’s soul had turned him what Mr Giles had once called ‘irritatingly sanctimonious’. Spike, whatever else he might be, wasn’t _that_.

He missed Mr Giles, who would have been interested, and who would have come up with three or four theories, each one more ridiculous than the last, until he posited some totally impossible idea based on some all but unknown story two or three thousand years old that would have turned out to be true. On the other hand, if he had told Mr Giles about the night’s activities, Mr Giles would have… he couldn’t imagine what Mr Giles would have said about him doing anything so _stupid_ as to go there on his own. About him having to be rescued by a vampire. About him being made into that vampire’s Pet. Mr Giles had always had the ability to make him utterly ashamed of himself with one carefully worded sentence, even though in the Sunnydale days Wesley had been careful to hide it. Later, though, there had been occasional words of approval, and he’d had to disguise his delight in those with at least as much assiduity. Well, the approval wouldn’t have been forthcoming this time: he had cocked everything up to a huge degree.

He was Spike’s Pet; that was all there was to say about it. Well, no, it wasn’t. There was more, and he would have to address it. He wearily pulled off his jacket: it would need to be dry-cleaned before it would be fit to wear again, and his shirt might as well go straight in the bin. He fumbled in the wardrobe for a clean one, abandoning the tie. Spike was right: what sort of idiot wore a suit and tie to chase vampires?

Then he sat down at the table and pulled a pad of paper to him. He had learned from Mr Giles that writing everything in his Watcher’s Diary was… unwise, but he had always used handwritten lists to marshal his thoughts, even if only in short ungrammatical phrases. He had plenty to list: Spike’s soul. The Compulsion. His Petship. Pethood. Pettery? Was there a word? Spike could demand… things, but Wesley didn’t think he would. The Compulsion, though, the Compulsion _required_ things. He owed Spike. Spike had said that he, Wesley, would pay up. He would. It was a duty. A debt. He could do it because it was his debt. Spike’s rage, though, and Spike’s _conversation_ were terrifying _._ Odd, too. Who did Spike think he was talking to? It was as if Wesley was only hearing half a conversation. Something to do with his soul? Spike was different. The fight, he had fought the way Wesley’s maître d’escrime did, like a Watcher was trained to do.

He looked at the paper. He couldn’t bring himself to write any of it down, but somehow it felt as if he should be able to put it together from what he had.

Then there was the thing he _really_ wasn’t writing down, wasn’t thinking about except that refusing to think about it was cowardly and he _had_ to face it. Spike had lost his temper with Wesley, which had been utterly terrifying. He had thought — not for the first time tonight — that he was going to die. He had been utterly helpless in the face of Spike’s strength, and if that was the form that paying his debt took, he didn’t know that he could do it. If Spike had been his usual sneering, sniping self, well, Wesley thought that he could force himself to accept… to accept pain, but Spike shouting and… He understood more now about what poor Mr Giles had gone through with Angelus. Wesley was going to have to go through that too. He didn’t really understand why it wasn’t happening _right this minute._ When the vampire had laid hands on him, he had thought that… he had wondered if he would survive it.

And that was just the first part of the deal. He had to agree to let Spike feed from him, and that went so far against all his training, as well as against normal instincts, that he didn’t think he could do it, but he had to do it, or Spike would… what? Go mad, which probably meant die, and Spike had come for him, had at least _tried_ to get him out of Dashwood’s house unharmed, so he owed Spike. He was aware that his mind was running in lab-rat circles. Had to do it. Couldn’t do it. Had to do it. Couldn’t. If Spike came on him to feed the way he had been over the, over the beating, he would panic. He would fight, and if he fought, then any chance of getting out alive would be lost. Fight a feeding vampire, and you died, _particularly_ if you were that vampire’s Pet.

And the other thing. The Other Thing. He’d never done that — stupid thing to think, Wesley, he’d never had a vampire feed from him either. But he never had, not with a man. A few — embarrassingly few — encounters with women, never quite living up to the anticipation, but never with a man. He preferred to pretend to himself that he wasn’t interested in men. He _had_ preferred to tell himself... and then he had stopped pretending. He had just never acted on it, not past the occasional item of reading material, carefully hidden. Well, quite a lot of reading material, actually, some of it rather... esoteric.

He had thought about what it might be like with Spike. Sometimes when he was almost asleep at night, or in the morning when he was barely awake, he thought about what it might be like with this man or that, and once or twice the lean body he imagined next to his own had been Spike’s. He had heard Spike’s contemptuous voice, and occasionally had imagined it softening into gentleness. Ridiculous, of course. More often he had imagined somebody giving orders that he had to obey, wanted to obey, had to obey. And now he _did_ have to obey, and he was damn certain that it wouldn’t be like the half-dreams.

He crumpled his list into wreckage. He understood nothing, he had fucked everything up so badly that he was a vampire’s Pet and the vampire wasn’t even _here_ , he had until dawn to pay for the fuck-up, and he could do _nothing_ except wait to see if Spike came back. He couldn't even decide if he _wanted_ him to come back, and he was horribly afraid that he wasn’t the only one of them viewing the fate worse than death as, well, as a fate worse than death. The only thing worse than having to give up his, his, it was a virginity of sorts even if there _had_ been women, to a vampire would be having the vampire spurn it. It was one thing to think, as a proper Watcher ought to think, that if he had to allow the vampire to feed from him and have sex with him, he would be better off killing himself. It was quite another thing to wonder if the vampire was sitting outside waiting for sunrise because the idea of having sex with a Watcher, with _Wesley_ , was so completely abhorrent that it would rather fry.

It was a relief when the buzzer sounded, and the crackling little intercom growled, “Pryce? Let us in. It’s bloody rainin’ again.” Even then, he wondered about the wisdom of answering, except that if he _didn’t_ let Spike in, he was foresworn — stupid old-fashioned term, but sometimes it felt as if he had nothing left _but_ his honour — and if he was going to die (and die horribly and painfully, his fear told him) it probably didn’t matter if it was now or at dawn. What he didn’t expect was the arrival at his door — and ringing the bell politely, and waiting, this time, for the invitation to come in — of a vampire whose hair was curling strongly from the damp, but who appeared to be in a perfectly reasonable temper, given that it was Spike, for whom _perfectly reasonable_ usually meant slightly irritable. He certainly didn’t expect to be handed a bottle of rioja — reserva, no less, and one of his favourites.

“Get that open and into glasses, Watcher; then we need to talk.”

The wine would have been better if he’d had time to allow it to breathe, but he didn’t feel inclined to argue. He turned away to his kitchen; when he looked back, Spike was standing with his eyes shut, his thumb and forefinger gripping the bridge of his nose. The pose looked… odd: both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, as if Wesley had seen _someone_ stand like that but not Spike. The vampire took his glass and dropped onto the couch, and Wesley perched rather nervously on one of his uncomfortable dining chairs.

“Right. About my soul, Pryce. It was like this…”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wesley has a secret. Spike is devoid of tact. (There’s a surprise.)

Well. He hadn’t expected that. If anything, he would have expected Pryce to be all over the possibility of talking to Rupert again, and instead, the Watcher was looking at him with an expression that was shifting slowly from disbelief to horror and back again.

“I don’t believe you.” Sticking with disbelief, then.

“Rupert?”

_Excuse me, please, Spike._ Oh, so that was how they were going to do it: Rupert would present himself courteously as if asking for the use of their body. He gave way. It felt odd to allow somebody else to speak using his voice, but with different cadences and a different accent. It sounded wrong, like an impersonation. A good impersonation, but not perfect.

“In the Watchers’ Academy, there are 17 steps in the first flight of stairs between the atrium and the Prefects’ Landing, and 19 in the second. At the bottom there are the boards listing every Watcher who has been responsible for a Slayer. A standard punishment for the trainees is to have to learn the names on one of the boards. The third board across begins: Lionet Cordwainer, Simon of Milforde, Fair Ascelina, Robert of Canterbury, and ends with John of Cripplegate and Emelota of Devon.” His hands lifted in front of him; that felt odd too. “The sign of the Watcher is the rune Thoris, given so, and any Watcher may use it to identify any other. Then as one moves through the degrees, the signs are Pumlo, Gesham, Rhyll, Czann…” His fingers sketched out rune after rune, so quickly that Spike wasn’t certain how they were done, but Pryce’s expression was tending more to the horror end of the scale now.

“Mr Giles?”

“Wesley.”

“You’re really…?”

“I am. Now stop faffing about, Wesley; we need to talk about the, the circumstance in which we find ourselves.”

“Oh God, Mr Giles, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, it was stupid, _I_ was stupid, I know I was, I didn’t mean, I didn’t think…”

“Fairly obviously you didn’t think, as Spike has already pointed out, but there’s no mileage in worrying about that. It’s done and we have to deal with the consequences, all three of us. Pour some more wine, Wesley, and let’s plan what we’re going to do.”

Yeah, actually, he was surprised that Pryce had opened the door at all. Not that it would have mattered if he hadn’t because there had still been plenty of people coming and going; sooner or later he would have been able to get through the lobby door on someone’s coat-tails, and the door of the flat wouldn’t be any sort of barrier to determined demon strength. He’d have expected Pryce to be trying to keep him out, not to let him in without a murmur, after he’d had the Watcher pinned down under a threat of extreme violence. He took over again.

“Rupert’s right, Watcher, we have to decide what we’re goin’ to do.”

“I… I’m willing to do whatever… needs to be done.” Pryce sounded less of a twit than usual, somehow. Well, he was still an idiot, but he’d found some guts somewhere. “I, I know what Dashwood put on you, and I, I, only if I do it, if we do it, what about Mr Giles? I mean, if we don’t do it, he said you would go mad, and what about, is that you or both of you? And that’s, that’s not, but if we _do_ do it, it will rip your soul and that’s Mr Giles, and…” He was the only one in the room breathing, and it was plain from the panicked panting that for all that he said he was willing, he was half crazed with fear and controlling himself only by an extreme effort of will. Spike found himself unwillingly impressed.

“Yeah. Breathe, Watcher. Rupert an’ I have been thinkin’ about that an’ actually we think it ain’t so bad. Frankie knew that I had a soul, but he didn’t know _whose_ soul I’ve got. He was thinkin’ about the difficulties of a vampire wi’ a pure and snow-white soul, not one that’s, that’s…”

_On the grubby side? Bit of an oil burner? Friday afternoon job?_

“Shut _up_ , Rupert! I was _goin’_ to say, one that’s second-hand. Already properly run-in. Livin’ in the real world, or as close as vampires an’ Watchers can get to the real world. An’ Rupert’s always been a bit of a pragmatist, right? So where a shiny new soul would likely be all fluttery an’ horrified about what we got to do, Rupert’s soul just goes lookin’ for what bits _have_ to be done the hard way, an’ what bits we can skate over. He says he’s not goin’ to break over us havin’ to do it at all, but he’s lookin’ for the fine line between what Frankie thought was involved, an’ what’s goin’ to satisfy the spell wi’out actually doin’ you any harm an’ wi’out tippin’ me over beyond what he can help me control, an’ what would leave him feelin’ bad too.” He took a swallow of wine, and gestured to Pryce to do the same. This would be easier if the Watcher was, not drunk exactly, but… relaxed enough to take suggestion without panicking any more than he had already done.

“Rupert thought… He reckoned we could do somethin’ wi’… Look, I threatened you earlier. Wi’ me belt.” Pryce shivered a little, but he nodded. “Were you whacked when you were a kid, Watcher? Smacked?”

Pryce frowned. “Was I… no. My parents… didn’t. Didn’t do that.”

“At school?”

“I’m too young.”

“Yeah, s’pose you are. That’s a pity, because… Well, look, Frankie was thinkin’ blood an’ broken bones an’ suchlike; Rupert reckons we can get away wi’ you havin’ a hidin’. It’ll hurt — it’ll have to hurt or it won’t work because, well, it’s a punishment, yeah? An’ the Compulsion has to see it as one — but nothin’ to last. No more, he says, than you might have got from an old-fashioned schoolmaster fer,” and he couldn’t resist the little dig, “fer breakin’ rules an’ goin’ off when you’d been specifically told not to.”

He was missing something, he knew he was, because he was expecting outrage, or fear, or even, he supposed, relief; what he got was a slow tide of scarlet running up Pryce’s neck and face.

“If Mr Giles thinks… That’s… I see. Yes.”

“The feedin’, that’s more of an issue. See, it’s got to be direct. I can drink animal blood, an’ I can drink human blood from packets if we can get them, which isn’t often, but this sort of thing, it needs to be draught, not bottled. An’ I told you, the trouble is, Watcher blood is special. If you let me do it — and you can take it as read that if you don’t give me yer consent, Rupert won’t allow me to touch you: that was what put me outside yer door last time — I can’t put the glamour on you or give you the ease to make it painless. If I do, you’ll be _too_ willin’ an’ I won’t be able to stop.” He could see that the blush was ebbing away, leaving Pryce white and scared-looking again. He blundered on. “I daren’t take from yer throat, either. I can take from yer arm.”

“Like the blood donation people,” nodded Pryce weakly.

“Yeah. I took from Rup… I’ve done it before. What we think is, if you’ve got a stake here — you have _got_ a stake here? — you’ll need to hold it against me in case I get…”

“Yes. I see.”

“It’s the most dangerous bit. We think I can’t get away wi’ only taking a dribble. It’ll need to be half a pint. That’s not enough to do you any harm, although it might mean that the wine gives you a bit of a head tomorrow. Rupert thinks he can hold me that long an’ get me off you afterwards, but you don’t let go of that stake until you’re sure I’m back in me right mind, an’ if he’s wrong, if you have to use it, you use it with a clear conscience an’ wi’out worryin’ about Rupert or me.”

“But…!”

He felt Rupert take over and one eyebrow go up with a glare.

“Yes, Mr Giles.”

And that was interesting because Pryce seemed to know who was there, and it was interesting too that Pryce had no problem at all arguing with Spike himself, but Rupert only had to say a word and Pryce rolled over and showed his belly like…

Oh. Well, _that_ was something else again. That would make things easier when it came to anything physical.

“An’ then,” he said slyly, “there’s the sex. Never done it wi’ a man, you said.”

The run of blood under the skin again. “No.”

“But you wanted to.” This time Pryce just looked away. “Who with, Watcher?” Because he thought he knew.

Pryce shrugged, trying and failing to make it look casual.

“Don’t really need to ask, do I?”

The look was piteous.

“You said you couldn’t have him. Did you try?”

“Spike…”

“Rupert, did he try?”

_What? I mean, I beg your pardon?_

“Did you refuse him, or did he never get up the nerve to ask? Look, I’m just tryin’ to work out the best way to do this.” Which was disingenuous to say the least: he was just making trouble, and Rupert had to know…

_Did I **refuse**_ _… What in the name of… Oh good lord… He doesn’t mean…?_

“I never asked,” stated Pryce loudly. “Why would I? I know you think I’m an idiot but I’m not enough of an idiot to come onto a straight man, even if he hadn’t been…”

Spike sniggered. “Straight? You think so? _Rupert? Straight?_ He never was.”

**_What?_ **

Pryce stared at him, obviously trying to work out how serious he was. He stared back. Pryce coughed weakly. “I always assumed he… I mean, there were women… I never saw him showing any interest in…

_Excuse me, I’m right **here**._

“Me, I always thought Rupert had an eye for a pretty boy.”

_No. No, I didn’t!_

Well, wasn’t often Spike got _that_ one wrong. “He says you’re right, Watcher. Really, Rupert? No interest in men? None at all? You an’ that chaos mage never…”

_No, we bloody didn’t. Weren’t. Straight man here. Never so much as thought about it._

“Oh. Damn. So I got _two_ blushin’ virgins to deal wi’, an’ both o’ them unwillin’. Oh, joy.”

Pryce stared at him for a moment, lip caught hard between his teeth — and suddenly (and with some dignity) rose and retreated, spoiling the effect slightly by slamming the bathroom door behind him.

_Well done, Spike. You were doing so well, persuading him that we could get through this, and then you just had to be a git. Couldn’t resist it, could you, couldn’t resist scoring points. Who was that against? Him or me? Or just Watchers generally?_

“What did I do?”

_You know damn well what you did - you were an arse. You **knew** he didn’t want to say that he had been attracted to me and you made him admit it, and worse still, you made him admit it in my hearing. You did it so that he also had to admit that it was pointless and that he knew it was. He’s anxious — he’s more than anxious, he’s plain **scared** : his first experience with a man is going to be fairly sub-optimal **anyway** and the man he wanted and couldn’t get knows about it and is going to be watching. You’ve made it obvious that as far as you’re concerned, sex with him is nothing but a chore. That’s pretty well guaranteed to ensure that he’ll resist, even if he doesn’t mean to, and if he resists it’s all likely to go wrong._

“He got us into this mess!”

_And he expressed himself as willing to get us out of it, even before we worked out how to do it without permanent harm to him._

He shifted uneasily, an odd feeling in his chest and belly.

_That’s guilt, Spike. Remember it?_

“What… Yeah. O.K.” He went to the bathroom door, and knocked. “Wes? I’m sorry. Rupert says I’m an arse, an’ he’s right.”

The door opened. Pryce was stone faced, but there was a suspicious flush on his cheekbones, and his eyes were very bright. “Can we just get on and do whatever we’re going to do?”

Spike put out a hand and Pryce flinched.

_What did I tell you?_

“Yeah, all right, I get it, I’m _sorry_ , both o’ you. Look, Wes, don’t worry. Rupert’s pretty well got me on a choke-chain. He may not know about men an’ puttin’ tab A into slot B, but he knows about people hurtin’ other people an’ he isn’t goin’ to let me hurt you. An’ look, I know you’ve only got my word for it, but I’m not gettin’ any sense that he’s…” He hesitated, for once looking for the right phrasing rather than just spitting out the words. “I don’t think he’s… Ah, fer fuck’s sake… He was taken aback, that I thought he swung both ways, an’ he was _surprised_ that you were hot fer him, but I’m not gettin’ that he’s disgusted, or that he thinks…” He waved wildly, failing to find any useful phrasing.

_I rather think I’m flattered._

Spike frowned, and Pryce cocked his head, obviously irritated by being excluded. “He says he’s flattered.”

Pryce looked sullen. “He doesn’t need to lie about it.”

Spike shook his head. “He’s not lyin’ — I think I would know.”

_Well, I’m not straight **now** , am I? Because you’re not, and it’s your body. I never thought there was anything **wrong** with it, it just wasn’t what I was. And good lord, I spent enough of my life not trying anything new. Time to branch out a little._

“Can you take over me body to do _that?_ ”

_I have no idea, but I don’t see why I couldn’t, if I could do it for other things._

“Well, that might help,” said Spike thoughtfully, suddenly serious again. “Pryce, he says you’re right, he _was_ straight, but he’s not now, on account of I’m not, so when we get to that, you can probably have him instead of me if you’d rather. Still get my body, but I’ll let him drive.” He grinned, only a little maliciously. “You gotta promise me you’ll be gentle wi’ him: he doesn’t know anythin’, an’ I don’t want him livin’ in me head an’ grumblin’ that his first time wasn’t good.”

Pryce’s expression eased a little; Spike backed away towards the couch again.

“Mebbe we should all stop talkin’ about what we’re goin’ to do, an’ just do it?”

_In what order?_

“Huh? Oh… Yeah. Pryce… Wes. Look, which way round are we goin’ to do things? Your choice, I suppose.”

Pryce swallowed hard, and his voice was unsteady. “Does it matter?”

“Not fer the Compulsion. Might be best to do the blood last because that’s the one most likely to go wrong.”

“Or to do it first, because if it does go wrong, the others are...”

“Yeah.”

_If you start from the assumption that things are going to go wrong, they will._

Spike considered. “Blood first, an’ I’m likely to be a bit… aggressive after. A bit rough. Last might be better.”

Pryce shook his head. “Blood last and I’m going to be thinking about it all the way, and likely to panic and… fight. That isn’t… I would be afraid that…”

_Spike, it doesn’t matter. It’s not ideal either way but the longer you give him to think about it, the more apprehensive he’s going to get. Pick one and go with it._

“All right, Pryce, we’ll do it your way, blood first. Rupert’ll make sure you’re safe.” He hesitated, looking again for the right words. “If I don’t… if I’m… if you’re worried about control, shout for Rupert. Make sure he knows if you’re not… If I’m not listenin’, he will be. Don’t forget, he can hear you even if you don’t hear him.” He looked around. “You’ll need a stake.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wesley gets a spanking. Spike gets a feed. Dead!Giles gets a surprise.

It took him several minutes to work out the safest way to do it: in the end, Pryce sat on the ugly couch and Spike sat on the floor between his legs, with his back to the Watcher. Pryce hooked his right arm around Spike’s body, with the stake touching his chest; after a moment, Spike knelt up to peel his shirt off and sat down again. When the stake came back, Pryce said nothing, but the wooden tip vibrated a little, and Spike had no heartbeat to cause the movement. Then the Watcher brought his left arm slowly around and held it in front of Spike’s face.

He thought of making some snippy remark about Pryce not taking the wrapper off, but Rupert shifted disapprovingly, and he thought better of it, unfastening Pryce’s cuff quite gently, and pushing the striped cotton out of the way to bare his forearm and elbow.

“It’ll hurt a bit when I bite. Try to keep still: if you fight me, it’ll… Just keep calm. Rupert’s watchin’, he won’t let it go wrong.” Pryce was trembling, and the scent of his fear was heady.

He bit.

Hotwethot _strong_ hotsaltbloodblood spicehotwet _fear_ wetbloodWatcher hotbloodthrob _fear_ burnhotwetblood ironmagicbloodhot _power_ hotwetlust bitebitedrinksuck bloodWatcher

Watcherbloodpowercopper ironwetbloodstrong _bloodhotbloodwet **taketakefeedsuck**_

_Spike. Enough._

**_Nononeverenough hotbloodwetwant wantwanttakehave feedfeedfuckkill_ **

**_Spike! Stop!_ **

It felt like a huge blow, not physical because nothing actually hurt, but _something_ hit him hard in the chest, and he fell forward, the stake scraping across his skin, and he heard Pryce giving a stupid high whimper before Rupert yanked him — somehow — to his feet (how did he do that from _inside_ Spike’s body?) and sent him floundering ridiculously across the floor to Pryce’s bathroom. The door slammed behind him — he must have done that too, or rather Rupert must, running Spike’s body again. Pryce’s neighbours would be complaining about the noise, doors banging and fights and shouting and now the bath running, why was the bath running?

He came to himself when Rupert upended him into the icy water and held him under it.

Given that he didn’t breathe, there was no reason, except possibly habit, for him to have come up gasping and snorting the water down his nose. He hung across the edge of the bath, ridiculously pleased that he wasn’t wearing his shirt and that Rupert hadn’t tipped him entirely into the tub, so that his jeans were no more than mildly splashed, but the cold water ran from his hair down his chest and he scrabbled for Pryce’s bath towel and scrubbed at his head. Even for a vampire, that was _cold._

“Bloody hell.”

_Indeed. Are we all right?_

He was more than all right: he could feel the Watcher’s blood all the way to his fingertips, he didn’t know whether to roar like an animal or sing, and he was _achingly_ hard. Just as well he was going to get laid presently. His head spun, and he felt as if he might send up sparks if anybody touched him.

“Oh. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, bloody hell.”

_Yes, you said as much._

“Oh, God, Rupert, that was somethin’ else. Is the boy all right?”

_Boy? He’s a long way past being a boy._

“Relative to me, he’s a boy. Relative to me, _you’re_ a boy. Is he O.K.?”

_He was conscious when you left him. When you’ve calmed down somewhat we’ll go and sort him out._

“Oh, yeah. Oh, _yeah._ Lookin’ forward to that. Yeah, I’ll sort him out.”

_Not until you’re calmer._

“He’s got a crackin’ arse, nearly as good as yours. Well, the way yours used to be. You got scrawny once you were ill.”

_I_ _… don’t quite know what to make of that. I never realised you were looking._

“Oh, yeah. Pryce wasn’t the only one who fancied you.”

_Good lord._ _So many wasted opportunities._

“You’re laughin’ at me.”

_Maybe a little._  

He had no circulation but for all of that, the Watcher’s blood fizzed around his body. He was strong, he was clever, he was handsome, he was the most vampire-y vampire ever, he was irresistible.

_You’re drunk._

“Oh, yeah. Pryce won’t know what hits him. Think I’ll have that pretty pink mouth first, put him on his hands an’ knees after.”

_Spike._ The tone was warning. He grinned.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll pay him back. Blow him too. He can fuck me if he wants. He’s a virgin, did you know? At least, as far as men go, he is.”

_The pair of you mentioned it._

“An’ so are you.” He could _feel_ the Watcher shrug. “If I’d asked when you were still alive, would you have said yes?”

_I doubt it._

He felt his mouth turn down exaggeratedly. “You don’t like me.”

_I like you much more now than I did then._

“You’re laughin’ at me again.”

_Indeed._

“Sodding Watcher. Watchers. You know what I’d really like?” Bloody hell, he _was_ drunk. His mouth was running way ahead of his brain. “I’d like to watch you an’ Wes get it on.”

_Well, you said he could have that — in a manner of speaking, given that it’s your body — so if he wants, you’ll be able to get your desire._

“Yeah, but… is it really like watching?”

_Not exactly — it’s like a cross between watching and being involved. I, ah, when you were, ah, yesterday morning? I was, um, I, I can only get so far away._

He sniggered aloud. “ _You_ were watchin’ _me_ , Rupert?”

When Rupert relaxed and laughed, it tickled. _And listening. Are you always that loud?_

“Rupert, I’m shocked. Are you goin’ to let me watch while you do it?”

_If you like. It would be interesting._

“Interestin’?”

_Well, you put your fingers_ _… It’s not something I used to do, but I liked it when you did, presumably because you like it. But I always had sensitive nipples, I could get right to the edge just by having somebody play with them, and you didn’t touch yours. You don’t like that?_

He shrugged. “It’s O.K., don’t _dis_ like it, but it’s not a big turn on.”

He traced a finger over his chest.

_Pinch a little. Scrape._

“Oh!”

_I’m not sure whether it’s genuine sensation, or my recollection of what it felt like, or perhaps just that I open you to the possibility_ _… Hell. This is_ **_not_ ** _a conversation we should be having now. It’s getting you even more out of control than you were five minutes ago._

“We’ll get Wes to suck them, see if we like it.”

_Yes, that’s rather what I mean. At the moment you have the attention span of a gnat, we haven’t finished what we’ve got to do and we’ve left poor Wesley on his own. Come on, Spike, get up. **Up!**_

“I love it when you’re all toppy an’ dominant.”

_When I’m what? No, never mind, not now. Get up. Open the cabinet._

“What for?”

_Wesley must have a first aid kit. Antiseptic wipe, elastoplast. And look, he has mouthwash. Use some of that, Spike. He isn’t going to want to be reminded that you’ve been drinking his blood._

“Damn fine blood it is too.” He opened the door. Wes, in the other room, was on his feet; when he saw Spike he took an inadvertent step backwards and reached for the stake again. Spike, quick as a puppy, bounced across the room to him, brushing aside hand and stake together, and grabbed at the back of his neck, hauling him in close enough to kiss. The pointed wood scraped his side and he pushed at it impatiently, humping against Pryce’s thigh.

_Spike! Oh, good lord_ _…_

He found himself dragged back again; Pryce’s eyes were wild and terrified. Spike opened his mouth and felt another of those non-physical slaps.

“I’m sorry, Wesley, he’s more or less with us, but he’s high. Not dangerous, but short on boundaries and inhibitions, not that he was ever well provided with either.”

Wesley’s eyes narrowed. “Mr Giles?”

“Yes. I seem to be sober, which is a surprise — presumably it’s the demon who’s actually high, because normally I feel what Spike does. May I see your arm?” He held out the plaster and wipe, and Wesley, a little nervously, allowed him to approach and treat the small punctures. “Any ill effects?”

Wesley shook his head mutely.

“Drink something, Wesley. No, not more wine. Make tea, or even just water. Have you any biscuits? Or fruit?” He ushered Wesley towards his kitchen; Wesley gave a high-pitched giggle.

“Blood donation: two custard creams and a cup of tea.”

“That’s right; you sit down. Where’s your tea?” He watched closely until Wesley began to relax a little. “Do you take sugar? I’ll have a cup with you.”

_That’s not as good as the blood. Bloodbloodblood. When do we fuck? The blood’s goin’ to make the fuck really somethin’. Even if it’s you doin’ it, Rupert — you’ll love it. Loooooooove it._

“Shut up, Spike. Wesley, how are you feeling?”

Wesley nursed his mug. “All right. Can we… can we get on?”

_Yeah. Brilliant idea. Let’s fuuuuuuck! Get yer kit off, Watcher. Rupert, let go o’ me hands, can’t fuck wi’ jeans on_ _… What happened to me shirt? Where’s me shirt? It’s me favourite, I’m not goin’ home wi’out it._

“Spike, shut _up_. I’m sorry, Wesley, he’s absolutely plastered. He’s making less sense than he did ten minutes ago. I’m hoping that it will wear off fairly quickly. Spike, your shirt is on the floor over there. You don’t need it now.”

_Well, tell Wes to get **his** shirt off. Does **he** have sensitive nipples like you, Rupert? Is it a Watcher thing?_

“Hands _off_ , Spike. We do not randomly play with our nipples in polite company. You’re shocking Wesley.”

_I want to play wi’ **his** nipples._

“Later. And if he doesn’t like it, you’ll stop.”

“If I don’t like what, Mr Giles?” Wesley’s expression verged on panic; Giles forced his — Spike’s — hands down to the surface of the table.

“Anything… Well, you know that you and he, that we, that a certain amount has to be, has to be done, but…”

_You’re witterin’, Watcher. We gotta fuck Wes. Fuck wi’ Wes._

“But don’t worry, I can control him. I, I confess that I was concerned that I might not be able to, but I can.”

_An’ that is **seriously** hot._

Wesley looked away, and slowly refastened his cuff. “Can we… Mr Giles, I really need us to…” He squared his shoulders. “Whatever else we’re going to do, I need us to, to get on with it.”

He felt a sudden wash of sympathy: Wesley was trying so hard to be courageous. He nodded, and Wesley got up and walked rather stiffly to the couch, picking up Spike’s shirt and laying it on the arm. Then he picked up…

_That’s me belt. Oh yeah, I forgot: I was goin’ to warm his arse, wasn’t I?_ There was a moment’s silence in their head, and then Spike, with the careful solemnity and precise diction of the seriously wasted, said, _Rupert, I think we ought to do that next, an’ you’d better do it. Not sure I_ _… Might be safer._

“Wesley? Spike and I think that it would be… It’s me. Not him. Is that all right? I mean, I understand that you might prefer, well that you would prefer not to at all, but given that…”

_God, Rupert, you just have **no idea** , do you? Don’t ask him: **tell** him. It’ll go better for him. _

“What?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr Giles?”

_See? How long has he known you? An’ he calls you Mr Giles an’ you call him Wesley. He panics an’ then he steadies when you tell him what to do. Tell him._ Spike sniggered a little. _Tell him he’s been a naughty boy an’ you’re goin’ to give him a spankin’. He’ll love it._ And with a sudden sober realisation, _Fuck, how did I miss that? Rupert, it **has** to be you. Should have worked that out earlier. Seriously, if I beat him, it’ll be a beatin’ no matter how gentle I am. If you do it, it’ll be foreplay no matter how harsh you are._

“Good lord.” Well, of course he _knew_ about such things but… “Are you sure?”

_Don’t think he’s ever done it, but bet your life he’s thought about it, an’ thought about you doin’ it. He’s the type. But you have to do it right, Rupert. Tell him what he’s to do, make him do it_ _… an’ don’t let him remember that it’s my body. Talk to him, make him know it’s you. Don’t give him time to realise what’s really happenin’. Remember, the Compulsion has to think that it’s discipline, that he’s bein’ punished. Make him think he deserves it. Tell him off thoroughly, an’ punish him. God knows, it’s not like he hasn’t done enough tonight to warrant a slap._

This only worked if they trusted each other, if he assumed that Spike knew what he was talking about, and it was true that Wesley had been very foolish, had put them all in danger: they needed, all three of them, to move past that.

“Put that belt down, Wesley: I’m not intending anything so severe. Not, mind you, that you would have grounds for complaint if I did. What you did was damn stupid, it was something that an Academy third-former should have more sense than to do. For an ex-Head Boy, it’s a downright disgrace.” His voice was dropping into its proper pitch and cadences, sounding like himself again, not like Spike, and Wesley glanced once at him, and then looked at the floor.

“Wasn’t it?” He let his tone bite, and Wesley jumped.

“Yes, Mr Giles.”

He moved past Wesley to the bed; underneath it… “It’s a little unorthodox, but since the situation demands it, I’m inclined to give you _precisely_ what I think you deserve.”

It was a Grecian-style slipper, oxblood red, leather soled, and it snapped noisily against his palm; Wesley jumped again.

“Turn round; touch your toes. I intend to make quite sure that you never do anything this foolish again, Wesley.”

_Have you done this before?_ You’re **good**.

“ _Now_ , Wesley. Bend _over_. Don’t make me tell you a third time.”

_You have, haven’t you? You’ve done this before._

He managed to avoid saying anything out loud. “No, I haven’t. Am I doing it right?”

Spike sniggered lewdly. _Oh, yeah. Well, look at him._

“Put your finger on the Compulsion. Tell me when I’ve done enough, Spike.” And he raised the slipper.

Wesley let out a yelp, hastily swallowed, and his back started to straighten, but he caught himself, and reached for his ankles again. Giles smothered a smile: his mother, he recalled, had a habit of telling him, when he had been egregiously naughty as a small boy, that he was going to be very sorry, and then _making_ him very sorry, with a similar slipper, smartly applied. He well remembered the shock of the first sharp smack, which had always produced a similar reaction.

_Talk, Rupert._

“Next time you think about going off, without backup, without a proper plan, without doing a decent amount of research first,” he scolded, punctuating his words with crisp cracks of the slipper sole on Wesley’s flinching rump, “you’ll remember where you landed up, won’t you? _Won’t_ you?”

Wesley gasped. “Yes, Mr Giles.”

“Because this is no position for a respectable Watcher to find himself in, is it, Wesley?”

“No, Mr Giles. Sorry, Mr Giles.”

“And then having your name and address in the phone book? I can’t imagine what you were thinking. I should have done this a long time ago, the first time I saw such blatant disregard for all good sense. Never mind, it’s not too late. Just bear in mind, Wesley,” and he put a little more effort into making the leather bounce off the taut wool of Wesley’s trouser seat, “that there’s nothing to stop me repeating it, as often as I need to. Is there?”

Wesley yelped again. “No, Mr Giles!”

_Nearly there._

“And if I do need to repeat it, we’ll try the effect of having your trousers down.” He swung, and Wesley squealed. “Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir!”

He kept it steady, smack after smack, until Wesley was jerking with each blow, wincing away, not quite crying out, but with a faint sound of pain in each gasp.

“Am I getting through to you, Wesley?”

“Yes, Mr Giles!”

_Oooh, yes, Mr Giles, sir! Yes, please! Half a minute more will do it, Rupert._

He lost his rhythm, choking on laughter, and hastily straightened his face to keep his voice stern. “Six more, Wesley. Show me how bravely you can take them.”

Wesley heaved in a huge breath, and fidgeted briefly, before settling, head down, back flat, legs straight.

_See, I told you he’d thought about it. Bet his porn stash is full o’ that sort o’ thing. He knows what’s expected._

“It’s more than I do. I’m winging it.”

_You’re doin’ very well. Give him his six, not too fast, an’ hard as you can. Make him really feel them. Scare him, make him think that he might break. Go slow enough that he won’t._

He thought briefly that if Wesley’s neighbours hadn’t been disturbed enough earlier, they were probably looking up estate agents now; the crisp whacks and Wesley’s squeaks couldn’t really be mistaken for anything other than what they were. It appeared that Spike was right, though: each blow made the Watcher rock, and his knees bend, but every time, he forced himself back obediently into position, and he didn’t attempt to rise at the end.

_Now pet him. Praise him._

“Um…”

_Move over, then, and let me do it._ “Come on, Wes, come here.” Wesley was trembling, surprisingly pliant, allowing his flushed face to be tucked against Spike’s bare shoulder. “There, that’s over. You did grand.” He stroked the soft hair at the Watcher’s nape.

“Spike?”

“Yeah. How do you tell?”

Wesley thought about it. “Your voices shift — I can’t always tell when you start to speak, but two sentences and I can. Oh, and he calls me Wesley and you don’t.” He started to pull away, but Spike held him still, running a hand down his back and then slyly over one cheek.

“That stingin’ a bit?”

Wesley went rigid. “Yes.”

“I’m jealous.”

“What?”

_Yes, I think he’s right there. What?_

“Rupert threatened to put me over his knee, once. Never did it. Wish he had.”

_Good lord._

He leaned his forehead against Wesley’s neck; Wesley fidgeted and stilled. “Can’t lie to me, Wesley. You didn’t totally hate that.”

“I…” Wesley shut his eyes; his voice was a choked whisper. “It’s only because… I didn’t… I did! Hate it. I did!”

“I think that’s a lie, Wes. You rather liked it.”

_Good lord._

“You think Rupert’s hot, don’t you? When he gets bossy? When his voice goes all sharp? Hot, yeah?”

_Good lord._

He let his fingers trail around Wesley’s hip. “Bet you used to get hard in the library when he snapped at you, didn’t you?”

Wesley blushed and bit his lip, but he didn’t deny it.

_Good **lord**._

“Bet you used to dream about him bendin’ you over a desk an’ teachin’ you yer manners.”

_Oh_ _…_

“He’s ‘good lord’-in’ fit to bust, Wes. He hadn’t got a clue. Not a bloody clue. The man had _no idea_.”

_Nobody ever tells me **anything**._

“So what are we goin’ to do, Wes? Are we goin’ to show him what he missed, you an’ me, or do you want me to push off — not that I can go far, but I can go — an’ you an’ he can work somethin’ out? He may be slow on the uptake, but when he applies his brains, he’s very thorough.”

_Spike, I really don’t know how_ _… I mean, I know_ **_how_ ** _, but I don’t, if he doesn’t like it I can’t_ _…_

“Or shall we just make a start, the three of us, an’ see how it goes?”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wesley gets laid. Spike gets laid. Dead!Giles gets … well, laid, in a manner of speaking.

Well, the Watcher was frozen again, and the _other_ Watcher was frozen again, and it was all going to be down to Spike. He put a hand in the middle of Pryce’s — of _Wes’s_ — chest, and pushed, fairly gently; the Watcher backed up nervously until the backs of his legs hit the bed.

“Wes, we can’t do this standin’ up. Not the first time: it’s too complicated, an’ you’re taller than me. Come on, it’s not difficult.”

“Not for you, maybe.” Well, it was a response, at least, although the Watcher’s voice was scratchy and nervous.

“Well, it’s not. Rupert made me stop in Tesco — that’s where the wine came from — an’ buy lube an’ condoms, so we’re good to go. Not that I think we need the condoms, ’cause you’ve never done it before so you’re not likely to have anythin’ nasty — not unless you’ve been messin’ with entirely the wrong sort of women, an’ I don’t think you have — and anyway you can’t give me anythin’ an you can’t catch anythin’ from me because of the demon. But Rupert said you would probably feel better about the whole thing. So come on, it won’t be any better for waitin’.”

_Oh, good **lord**. Spike, I really hope you’re still drunk, because if you aren’t, your notions of foreplay and, and, and seduction are really crap._

“Oh, says the man wi’ no experience of other men.”

“Pardon?”

He wrinkled his nose. “Rupert’s criticisin’.”

_What did I tell you about making him think it was a chore? I may not know about other men, but I’m damn sure that ‘let’s get the job done’ wouldn’t work with a woman. You’re the one who told me to pet and praise him — shouldn’t you still be doing it?_

“I’m sorry, what have… what should I… Yes. Sorry. We need to get on.” Wesley started to unbutton his shirt, but his expression was bleak.

“Not you, you pillock! Me! He thinks I should be romancin’ you, I reckon.”

Wesley stared at him so blankly that he laughed. “He’s maybe got a point. Yeah, come on, let’s have that shirt off. You’re lookin’ like you’re expectin’ me to bite you, an’ we’ve already done that. Wes, relax a bit. We’ve got three things that have to be done, an’ we’ve done the two difficult ones, an’ they weren’t so awful, were they? Promise, this won’t be awful either. Frankie was hopin’ I’d be rough wi’ you an’ you’d be terrified at best an’ gawd knows what at worst, so we’ll go about it gently just to spite him. From all I’ve heard he was a total dick even before he was turned an’ he ain’t improved any since. Yeah, shoes off as well, but you needn’t take off anythin’ else yet if you don’t want to.” He pushed again, and Wesley sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed. “Look, do you want me to put the glamour on you? It’ll just… stop your head shoutin’ at you a bit. Rupert’ll keep an eye on things, he won’t let anythin’… he won’t let me do anythin’ other than…”

 _I don’t like that idea. I_ **_really_** _don’t like the idea of him not being fully compos mentis._

“Yeah, well, maybe he doesn’t like the idea of doin’ it when he’s in his right mind, Rupert. It’s the only choice we can really give him, an’ I grant you it’s a crap one, but pretty well all of everybody’s choices tonight have been crap.”

 _I know that, but_ _…_

Wesley stared at him shrewdly. “Mr Giles objected, didn’t he?”

“Rupert’s notions o’ free consent are a bit less flexible than mine.”

_I’ve been on the wrong end of a vampire’s notions of consent. You know that._

It was pointedly non-accusatory, but it bit, for all that. Spike flung himself away from the bed, snarling. “Yeah, I do remember. I was _there_. An’ I can feel how _you_ feel about that, Rupert, but _I can’t fix it_. All I’m tryin’ to do here is get Wes to the point where he isn’t flinchin’ every time I look at him, because we gotta do this, remember? If he thinks it would be easier wi’ the glamour, I’ll put the glamour on him. If he doesn’t want it, I won’t, but this is _not_ the time for a parliamentary debate on the concept of valid consent! If he wants to give up his ability to choose, that _is_ a choice, an’ it’s his choice to make, Rupert, not yours. If he wants the glamour, he’s havin’ it, an’ that means that he’s countin’ on you to keep me in line, an’ you’ll do it _whether you like it or not!_ ”

“Please stop fighting,” said Wesley, quietly. “It’s too hard to follow when I can only hear half of it. I… Mr Giles, thank you, I do appreciate that… that you have my best interests at heart, but Spike’s right: we have to do this. Allow me to have your best interests at heart too, both of you.” He shifted across the bed, and lay down awkwardly. “Spike? Thank you but I would prefer you not to put me under the glamour, I think. I’m nervous but I’m not… not actually scared. I just… don’t quite know what to do next.”

It was a lie, that he wasn’t scared, and Spike felt Rupert smile, but neither of them felt inclined to call him on it. He came back to the bed, and settled himself at Wesley’s side. “I’ll show you, then. I’ll start, an’ you join in once you get the idea.”

For five minutes, he petted the Watcher as he might have petted an animal, stroking his hair, running his fingers down the man’s chest, caressing his jaw and neck. When Wesley relaxed a little, he risked approaching for a kiss, not pushing, asking Wesley wordlessly to open his mouth but not making anything of it when he did. His hands went no lower than the prominent hip bones; although he tucked his knee between Wesley’s, he didn’t push for a response. Presently he began to mouth at the Watcher’s throat; the muscles under his lips spasmed, but he pretended not to notice, and ran a line of gentle kisses across Wesley’s collarbone and down his chest. He let his tongue flick lightly over a nipple, and Wesley squeaked. Spike smirked. “ _Is_ that a Watcher thing, then? Rupert said he had sensitive nipples.” He tongued again, fingers searching the other side and flicking lightly. “You like that?”

Wesley didn’t answer, but for the first time his own hands came up, splaying on Spike’s chest, and rather shyly tracing across — and Spike quivered. Wesley’s eyes flickered briefly up to his face, and then, with a look of nervous determination that made Spike grin, the Watcher lowered his head, and licked.

_Tell him to do that again._

“You got Rupert interested, Wes. Try bitin’.”

_Oh yes. Harder._

“Don’t be rude, Rupert. He won’t do it unless you say please.”

Wesley sniggered in surprise; the vibration tickled Spike’s chest. He shivered. “See, that’s interestin’, Wes. Seems you like it well enough, but it’s not amazin’. Before, I was the same, but I think we could get Rupert thrashin’ an’ beggin’, an’ it’s not even his body. An’ I’m feelin’ what he’s feelin’ an’ I have to tell you…”

_If you’re going to tell him that if his mouth feels this good here, it’ll be bloody fabulous somewhere else, don’t. You’ll freak him out._

The Watcher wriggled down the bed and set his mouth on Spike’s belly; at the same time, with the same dogged expression as before, he spread one hand over the front of Spike’s jeans. Spike bucked.

_Or maybe you won’t. What do I know? I’ve never done this before._

“I have to tell you that I have now officially stopped worryin’ about this. It’s goin’ to be just fine.” He reached down and caught Wesley by the hair, tugging gently to bring him back up the bed. Wesley looked worried; Spike got in before he could speak. “An’ you can lose that ‘oh God, I’m doin’ it all wrong’ expression, because you’re not. You’re doin’ grand: it’s just that I’m still a bit tiddly wi’ the blood, an’ you don’t want to push me on too much further than you are yerself.”

Wesley looked even more worried, and Spike sighed. “It’s O.K.. Stop lookin’ fer things to freak about when I’ve told you that there aren’t any. It’s fine, Wes. Honestly. It’s not you, it’s me, as the Americans used to say way too often. You’re doin’ just fine, but I’m liable to rush you on too fast, that’s all. So what we need to do,” and he managed to hold off on the evil smile, “is get Rupert up to the bridge an’ tell him to steer for a bit. He’ll go slower than me because he’s still testin’ to see what all the buttons an’ dials do, like you are. Rupert! Get that panicky look off yer face, an’ you an’ Wes have a play together an’ see what works fer you. Give us a shout when you get to anythin’ you don’t understand, or when you’re ready to crack the seal on the lube.”

He wondered if there was any physical shift when they changed places; he thought it likely that there would be something. When he had fought, using Spike’s body, it had felt odd: he had the skills he had honed so carefully throughout his working life, but he had also been aware that his reach had been shorter in Spike’s body than in his own, and his speed and stamina better, although it was odd that apparently he remained left-handed. He rather thought that they needed to spend some time on joint physical activity until both of them were used to it. A few times, too, before the great reveal, he had noticed Wesley looking oddly at them, and he didn’t think it had always been on account of something that one of them had said. Wesley, for all his apparent horror at the discovery that Giles was hanging out with Spike, had got over the surprise with some dispatch. Giles wondered if his Watcher’s instincts had been half way to the truth even if his intellect had not.

Nonetheless, even if Wesley was fully aware of who was, as Spike put it, on the bridge, it seemed only courteous to announce his presence and to check that Wesley was amenable to Spike’s suggestion.

“Wesley? Is, is that…”

He was interrupted; Wesley’s face was pink with embarrassment and he didn’t quite seem to know where to look.

“Mr Giles, I really am very sorry about this. I… If you don’t want… I quite _understand_ that you wouldn’t want, particularly since you’ve never… and, and, if Spike… there isn’t any reason for him not… I’m quite ready… There’s no need for you… Because of course you wouldn’t want to, I absolutely see that. There’s no need to wait any longer. I’m ready.”

That was another lie, and another lie that Giles at least was going to ignore, although he felt Spike snort derisively. He thought of a different direction to go. “Wesley, do you know when I last got laid?”

It was obviously such an unexpected question that Wesley blinked, and stared at him. “No?”

“No. Neither do I. What with the hospital, and before that, the tests, and before that, the general not feeling quite well, and through all of it, the Slaying, and the research, and living with a selection of people thirty years my junior, and the _complete_ lack of privacy, I can’t any longer remember the last time I had sex with somebody else. Hell, I don’t think I even managed a little solitary pleasure for a good six months before I died. Suddenly I’ve got a second chance — not at all one that I would have expected, and even if I _had_ expected it, the detail is a complete surprise. Now as Spike has pragmatically pointed out — and indeed as you have yourself — we, or rather you, have to do this. I appreciate that _you_ don’t want to. I appreciate that perhaps Spike doesn’t want to. In an ideal world, I think that _I_ would probably not want to. But this, Wesley, this is not an ideal world, and since we _have_ to, I at least don’t see why we shouldn’t get some good of the situation, and if that means that I get laid despite being _dead_ — not even undead but genuinely, seriously, _dead_ — then I have no trouble at all with it as a concept. If you prefer me not to be involved, I’ll push off again, but if you’re in any way willing, do you think you could stop making objections and just kiss me?”

Wesley, rather to his surprise, did. It wasn’t, he thought, the same as kissing a woman, but it wasn’t so different that he couldn't get the hang of it.

_Now seduce him._

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry?” Wesley pulled away again, wearing what Spike had called his ‘oh God, I’m doin’ it all wrong’ face. He gave a snort of irritation.

“Wesley, when all this is over, you and I need to do some research and see if we can find a way for you to hear what’s going on. Give me a moment: that was Spike, not you.”

_I said, seduce him. Daybreak’s comin’, Rupert. We’ve got enough time, but it’s not unlimited. You’re the one he wanted, you’re the one he was hot for, so take advantage of it. I know I said you should just have a play, but that was fer his benefit. I’m sayin’ to you, take charge an’ move him on._

“How?”

_Oh, fer fuck’s sake! Same way you did it wi’ a girl, you plonker! Come on, when Ripper was young, how did he get into Sharon’s knickers?_

Well, usually he had _talked_ them into…

Oh.

Spike’s normal voice wasn’t too far from Ripper’s growl; he wondered if that meant that Spike could reproduce Ripper’s purr.

“Close your eyes, Wesley. I don’t want you looking at Spike, because it’s not Spike who’s here, it’s me.” Well, yes, that seemed to have some effect. He let his fingers drift over Wesley’s chest, and nuzzled into his neck, lips close to his ear. “Was Spike right? Did you daydream about me in the library?” He caught an earlobe lightly between his teeth and then sucked. Wesley shivered. “Did you?” He spider-walked his fingertips down Wesley’s side, and when Wesley didn’t move or object, after only a slight hesitation, he traced the waistband of his trousers, pressing on the single button. “What did you imagine that we did?”

Wesley shivered, but he didn’t reply. It had been the wrong question, he thought. Slightly wrong, but wrong.

“What did I do, Wesley? When you imagined it, what did I do?”

He almost couldn't hear the response. “Whatever you wanted. _Anything_ you wanted.”

_Bingo. Come on, Rupert, I keep tellin’ you. This is difficult for him: I’m willin’ to bet that wanker Roger has got him so that whatever his head tells him about sex between two men being all right, his gut tells him it isn’t. He’s tried to balance his inclinations and his upbringin’ an’ he can’t do it. He’s tried to obey Roger, and the only way for him to disobey is for somebody else not just to tell him that it’s allowed, but to tell him that it’s **required**. The way for you to make it easy is by fallin’ in wi’ his fantasies. I can’t do it because it wasn’t me he was dreamin’ about. You don’t have to be rough — not physically — but what he’s been longin’ for isn’t the quiet librarian, it’s the Boss Watcher. He knows in his head that he’s allowed to say no, but he wants to think that he can’t because if he **can** , he ought to. I know it sounds stupid, but if you order him to enjoy himself, he’ll do it, an he’ll like it, same as you ordered him to bend over for a spankin’ an’ I’m tellin’ you, he liked that too._

He managed to keep from speaking aloud. “Are you _sure_ he liked it?”

Spike snorted. The question was obviously too stupid to warrant a response. _If yer conscience bothers you, then **afterwards** we’ll have a go at straightenin’ out his head and teachin’ him that sex isn’t sinful or dirty or weak or whatever Roger has told him it is. Fer now, just don’t offer him any choices. Believe me, if he’s really scared or unwillin’, you’ll know._

Well… yes, he thought he would. Boss Watcher it was, then. Mr Giles with a hefty injection of Ripper.

“I told you what to do and you did it, Wesley, didn’t you? Well, now I’m going to tell you again. You’re going to do what I want, aren’t you?”

Wesley trembled.

“I asked you a question, Wesley.” He went for firmness rather than severity.

“Yes, Mr Giles.”

“Good. I’m going to undress you now, and you’re going to let me.” He caught himself about to add ‘aren’t you?’ again and bit it back.

_That’s right. Tell him, don’t ask him._

Even with Spike’s endorsement, he half expected Wesley to object, but the Watcher was pliant, lifting his hips, eyes still obediently shut, although his cheekbones showed a splash of scarlet.

_Now tell me he isn’t likin’ this._

Well, as evidence went… “Turn over.” He wasn’t certain why he wanted to see…

 _Lyin’ sod. You want to see what you did to his arse because you’re well on the way to bein’ as much of a perv as I am. You **sure**_ _you’ve never done this before, Rupert? Never turned some girl over yer knee? No?_

“You’re very red still, Wesley.” He didn’t ask for permission to touch; he patted firmly, half expecting Wesley to jump. “Is that sore?”

“No, Mr Giles. Not really. It’s a bit hot.”

_It’s that all right._

So this was touching a naked man. Touching Wesley. It was definitely interesting. He explored the length of Wesley’s back with hands and mouth, and Wesley flexed beneath him.

_Rupert? We’re a bit overdressed yet._

And thereafter it was surprisingly easy. Spike was right: he didn’t, it seemed, need to be physically harsh. Wesley responded to every touch, particularly if Giles backed it up with a firm command or an assertion of his own desire. When his lips crested Wesley’s hip, and he hesitated with a brief panic of his own, Spike elbowed him aside with a snort of laughter to close his — their — mouth over Wesley’s straining flesh; two minutes later, Giles, fascinated by Wesley’s helpless whimper, took back control and successfully made Wesley’s head thrash from side to side before Spike interjected again.

_That’ll do, Rupert. You want him to come on yer cock; besides, you’ve got natural talent, I can see that — wasted as a straight man, you were — but you’re short on experience yet, an’ if he comes in yer mouth, you’ll gag, which won’t do much fer yer reputation as the Boss. He’s our Pet, remember; we’ll get to do this again._

“Not if he…”

**_No_** _, all right, not if he objects, but he won’t. Fer one thing, he **is** our Pet, like it or not, an’ it’ll itch in **his** blood as well as in ours. An’ fer another, I think the plain fact of somebody showin’ him a little kindness will have him followin’ us about like a puppy. He’s desperate to love somebody an’ to be loved back, an’ I can feel what’s goin’ on wi’ you, Rupert. You’re due a little kindness yourself._

“And you’re not?”

_I’m a vampire, remember? Kindness ain’t what we do best._

“You’re a twit, too, if you think you won’t like it when you get it. All right, what do we do now?”

 _Where did we leave the lube? Wesley, this_ _… Damn. You’re right, Rupert, we’ve got to find some way for Wes to hear what we say. Shove over. “_ Wes? This’ll be cold, I don’t have the body heat to ease it for you. Just don’t want to take you by surprise, O.K.?”

“Spike?”

“Yeah. Don’t panic, we just want you nice an’ relaxed, an’ then Rupert’s takin’ over again.”

“If he… is he… I mean, I realise that…”

“Wes, if you don’t stop _witterin’_ every time I mention his name, I’m goin’ to get him to spank you _properly_ , bare arse an’ over his knee, an’ if he won’t, I’ll do it meself.”

 _Oh, I_ _… damn._ “Don’t worry, Spike, I’ll do it. Not necessarily because you want me to but because I never have and I’m starting to think that I would like it.”

“Oh, Mr Giles, I…”

“And if I want to do it, you’re going to let me, aren’t you, Wesley? Because that’s what _you_ like.” Vampire strength let him flip Wesley lightly onto his face, and he remembered to pull the blow so that the handprint on one lean buttock flared only briefly and paled again, although Wesley yelped gratifyingly. He rubbed the sore spot lightly, and then smacked it again. “Oh, that’s pretty. Shall I put you across my knee? Or make you kneel on the bed? You’ll do what I say, won’t you? Show Spike how good you are when I tell you what to do.”

Wesley, scarlet with embarrassment, glanced briefly over his shoulder, and then wordlessly shifted to his knees.

 _Oh bloody hell. Rupert, we have to have him right this minute. Never mind the damn condom, we don’t need it an he’s not thinkin’ about anythin’ but pleasin’ you. More slick than that, twice as much. Go slow. Slow as you can. Oh sweet blood, if I had known he would make a sound like **that** I would have done this years ago. Wait. Wait, he’s tensin’ up._ “Wes, don’t fight it. Relax into the burn an’ it’ll pass. You’re doin’ grand, love. Give it a minute an’ you’ll get what it’s all about. Aye, that’s it. Now, Rupert: nice an’ steady. Don’t rush him.”

“Spike’s right, you know, Wesley: if we’d realised that you were so vocal, we’d have had you in bed a month ago…” And this, yes, this was sex with a man. He liked it. He still wasn’t clear if he might have liked it when he was alive, if he should be regretting lost opportunities, but it seemed pointless. He liked it _now_. At least, he liked it this way round, and he was willing to have a try the other way.

_You’ll like that too, or at least, I do, so you ought to. Can you get a hand to his dick as well? Get him off first, because what with sharin’ the body, an’ the Pet thing, an’ the blood, when I come I reckon I’m goin’ down **hard**. I’ll not be fit to do anythin’ nice fer him after._

Wesley was shuddering beneath him; he realised with amusement that the advantage of having sex with another man was that he knew how close Wesley was, and how to give him that last touch that had him sobbing his release into the bed covers, before letting go himself and feeling Spike overwhelmed by sensation and searching for something to bite. He managed to turn his face away from Wesley’s neck, and to hold it there long enough for the vampire to collapse, chest heaving with snatched breaths he didn’t actually need.

_Holy fuck. I am so dead. Undead. Whatever._

Yes, he felt that way himself. Wesley shifted uncomfortably, and he moved his weight off the other man, and settled down beside him. When he could open his eyes, he caught the edge of Wesley’s hastily averted gaze.

“What?”

Wesley shook his head, mutely. Giles thought about it for a moment. “Spike is no madder than he was a day ago, and I’m feeling good. Spike? Can you feel the Compulsion?”

There was a moment’s silence in their head. _No. An’ it’s not dawn yet, so that’s good._

“He says not. So he’s all right. What about you, Wesley? Are you… I don’t really know what to ask.”

Wesley didn’t answer him; after a minute he managed to heave himself up onto one elbow — most of Spike’s loadbearing capacity seemed to have failed — to look into the other man’s face.

It was…puzzled.

_Pet him again, Rupert._

He reached for Wesley, who drew back. “You don’t have to, Mr Giles, I’m…”

He pinched the bridge of his nose… ah. _That_ was one of the things Wesley had seen: Giles’ little physical quirks and idiosyncrasies on Spike’s body. “Wesley, I swear, if you tell me one more time what I do or don’t have to do, I will take Spike’s advice, put you over my knee, and warm your backside so thoroughly that you won’t sit down until Tuesday.”

_Attaboy. I’ll take a ticket._

_“Don’t!”_ cried Wesley, desperately, rolling onto his face. “I, I know that you, that he, I know you think… I know I’m a poor excuse for a Watcher… a poor excuse for a…” He choked, and rolled off the bed, face turned away, and retreated in some haste to the bathroom.

_Poor excuse for a man, he was going to say._

“And that goes down to Roger’s account, at a guess: what you were saying earlier.”

_Yeah. You goin’ to let it pass?_

He recognised, just as he opened his mouth to ask indignantly what Spike expected him to do about it, that this was nothing to do, or only very remotely to do, with the sexual relationships between men of which his experience was limited to the present time and place. This was to do with warm, breathing, living humans — and he no longer was one.

_You’re closer than I am._

At the bathroom door, he could hear water running, and only just managed to keep Spike from the standard vampire method of achieving entry. Wesley’s neighbours had already put up with a midnight fight, followed by some noisily kinky sex play, followed again by some hardly less noisy sex; if they were woken a fourth time in the early hours by the sound of a vampire kicking in a bathroom door, they would probably call the police, and he at least wouldn’t blame them.

 _S’pose not_ _… an’ anyway, I reckon I ought to put me boots back on before I go bashin’ down doors._

“And some clothes.”

 _Picky. Well, if we’re not kickin’ the door in_ _…_

“Let’s see if there’s anything suitable in the kitchen.”

Fortunately the bathroom lock was a simple twist, so a kitchen knife in the groove flicked it open. Wesley must have heard them come in, but he didn’t turn. The water ran over his bowed head and down his back; there was a strong smell of soap.

“Is there room in there for me?”

Wesley ran his hands through his wet hair. “Let me get out, Mr Giles.”

“Wesley, under the circumstances, I really do think you could call me Rupert. Or Giles, without a qualifier. And I wasn’t suggesting that you get out, I was suggesting that Spike and I get in.”

Wesley’s spine showed his discomfort. “Oh. Well, I suppose it’s whatever you want, Mr Giles. Spike.”

_O.K., I don’t need to tell you that’s a big flashing neon warning sign with sirens and the rest, do I?”_

“You do not. Wesley, while I understand that the events of the last 24 hours have been…” he searched for a word.

_Disturbing? Electrifying? Bloody hot?_

“It’s not,” said Wesley, loudly, over the tumbling water, “the last 24 hours that are the problem. It’s the next 24. And the 24 after that.”

He stepped over the edge of the bath, no longer waiting for an improvement on the invitation that had been so unwillingly given. Wesley flinched and then froze at the touch on his shoulders.

_The Pet thing._

“No, not the bloody Pet thing!”

“Well then… what? What? You _heard_ that?”

_Huh?_

“He heard you, Spike. He heard what you said.”

_Ooh. Interestin’. Since when?_

“Since… it started while you were... while we were... Just before the end. Not all at once. It came on like, like somebody tuning in a radio.”

_Not blood then. Somethin’ to do with the Pet thing or Frankie’s spells. The sex?_

“Hmm. I don’t know… I think it probably _is_ some combination of the blood and the sex. The blood would make it happen — or the Pet thing — and then the sex would trigger it. How _very_ interesting. What’s the range, Wesley? Could you hear him when we were outside the door?” He reached past Wesley for the shower gel; Wesley flinched again.

“I could hear that you were talking but not what about. Same range as normal hearing, I suppose.

 _Does it work both ways?_ “Change places, Rupert.”

_Does it work both ways, Wesley?_

“Yes, Mr Giles.”

_Well, that’ll be helpful, I must say._

“Won’t it, though? Want me to wash yer back, Wes?”

Wesley did turn at that, scowling so blackly that even Spike fell back a step; then his expression smoothed out to a careful blankness. “Whatever you want, of course.”

_Oh yes — we came in here because Wesley was upset._

“I’m not upset!”

Spike laughed; Giles gave him their equivalent of a kick; Wesley glared at them. Giles squeezed a large dollop of Imperial Leather into his hand. “Turn round,” he said blandly, and when Wesley, with another glare, obeyed, he smoothed his palm slowly from Wesley’s nape to his waist, and then spread the suds wide. He kept it impersonal, washing Wesley’s back calmly, and not attempting to trespass further. Then he washed himself. Wesley shifted to give him the benefit of the shower, but didn’t move otherwise, and didn’t offer to wash _his_ back.

“It’s disconcerting, you know,” he said, mildly, “at odd times. This is one. I’m washing a body that isn’t mine. Shorter, smaller, and in much better shape. May I use this towel?”

Wesley nodded, abruptly, and followed him out, reaching for the other towel and scrubbing harshly at his hair, and then dragging it down his chest. Giles tutted. “Wesley, you’re so _rough_ with yourself.” He knotted his own towel around his waist, and took Wesley’s from him, rubbing gently, blotting water from the ends of his hair, and kneeling to dry the younger man’s ankles and feet. He looked up with a smile. “That’s another one: my knees haven’t worked as well as this in twenty years.” He rocked back and rose in one smooth movement, and picked the bathrobe off the door, holding it open for Wesley, who turned into it suspiciously, and belted it tightly. “Let’s go and talk. I’ll make Spike put some clothes on.”

_Hey! Whose body is this?_

“Yours, and don’t you know it. Jeans at least, Spike, and we could finish the wine. But we _are_ ,” and that was the voice of the Boss Watcher, even though it came from Spike’s throat, “going to talk.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a threesome of Wesley, Spike and Dead!Giles, who do you think is going to be in charge?

Wine helped. Spike still preferred bitter, so Giles stayed on the bridge, as Spike insisted on calling it, directing Wesley to the couch and taking the hard dining chair himself.

“Now. You are concerned about the future, you said? That’s… that’s reasonable. I don’t quite understand your timing but…”

“I… Yes. I’m, I’m worried about what’s going to happen, Mr Giles.”

_That isn’t it._

“I, I beg your pardon?”

_Wes, this conversation is going to go much better if you remember a couple of things. The first one is that I’m a vampire. I can hear your heartbeat. I can feel your body heat. I can smell you. Specifically, I can smell if you’re lyin’. The second thing is that you are my Pet, an’ that means that when I feel that you’re lyin’ to **me** , I start feelin’ the need to do somethin’ about it. That conversation we had about broken bones an’ missin’ teeth? That’s the way disciplinin’ a Pet normally goes, remember?_

“Spike, you know perfectly well that we aren’t going to do that. Stop trying to frighten him.”

_I’m not, Rupert. Yeah, O.K., maybe we’re not goin’ the mangled flesh route, but if he lies to us, we won’t be able to avoid doin’ somethin’ to him, even if he does end up nothin’ worse than spanked_ _… Whoa. Feel that?_

“I did. I may only be a vampire’s tenant and not a vampire, but I felt that. I don’t know what it was.”

_It was what young Wes was frettin’ about._

“I’m not! It wasn’t!”

“Wesley, even I can read that one as a lie, without the vampire senses. What is it? Are, are you concerned that Spike will harm you? Because we may have to, to negotiate some sort of… I’m not feeling that he has any underlying desire to hurt you. The Pet thing, well, yes, that’s a problem. I’m afraid it’s true that if you lie to him, he _will_ know and he _will_ feel the drive to, to do something about it, but we… I’m sure that once we know precisely how the relationship between a vampire and his Pet works, we’ll be able to make it…”

_It isn’t that, is it? What did he say before he flounced off before? ‘Poor excuse for a Watcher’, he said, and he was going to follow it up with ‘poor excuse for a man’, weren’t you, Wes? Who called you that? My money’s on Roger._

“Mine would be on Quentin. Sounds like his sort of phrasing, but yes, somebody in the Council. Wesley?”

Wesley looked away, fiddling with the belt of his bathrobe — and yielded. “Score for you both. My father said that Quentin said that I was… no use to the Council. Apparently I was the best they could put together as liaison between the Council and Buffy, or the Council and you, Mr Giles. Since you… um, since…”

“Since I died, yes?”

“They were hoping to send me back to her then. Nobody else wants to go: they think, well you know they do, that she’s a loose cannon, but they think she should have a Watcher. They contacted her and told her that I would be coming, and she said she _had_ a Watcher, she had Xander Harris.”

He winced. “And that went down…?”

“About as well as you would have expected, yes. Somehow it was my fault. I told them that Xander was… was at least as competent as I am, and was acceptable to the Slayer so there was no point in, in… Then the next thing was I was pulled from what I’d been doing, collecting artefacts and cataloguing them, and I’m down in the basement with the probationers and the ones who are time-serving to retirement, doing…”

“Filler work. Leave the stitching alone, Wesley, the whole lot will unravel if you pick at it.”

_O.K., I can see why Travers said that about your Watching talents — he’s a dick, but that’s not breaking news, an’ it’s just like him to train you to do somethin’ pointless and then to criticise you for the fact that it **is** pointless — but what about the other half? Leave the stitchin’ **alone** , we said._

Wesley folded his hands; his gaze was fixed on his bare feet.

“You can hardly expect us to agree with Roger or Quentin on the subject of your Watching abilities.”

“I never… _you_ thought the same as he did!”

_Can’t deny it, Rupert: you did._

“It was a long time ago, and as Spike says, it was a result of pointless training. I think you’ve learned a lot better since, and at least you managed to get there without an Eyghon tattoo on your arm and a history of demon raising. When you came to Sunnydale, you may have been…” He hesitated, trying to think of words that wouldn’t damage Wesley any further, now that he realised the man had been subject to the same sort of verbal abuse as Giles himself.

“Incompetent?”

“Under-trained and over-confident, and perhaps a little short on respect for your elders, and on appreciation of field experience over book-learning, and I’ll admit that I wasn’t impressed, but I at least will lay the blame for that at the feet of the Council, not you personally. You should also bear in mind that I was frightened for the Slayer, and offended at being side-lined, so that I would probably have resented _anyone_ they sent. Who called you a poor excuse for a man, Wesley?”

Wesley was silent for a long time; Giles felt Spike shift within him, and then take over. “Wes! Answer us. Who said it? And why?” He waited a beat and then added, quite gently, “Pet, if I have to vamp out an’ give you an order, I will, an’ if I do, you _will_ obey me, an’ then Rupert will be pissed off wi’ me fer doin’ it, an’ wi’ you fer makin’ me do it, and nobody’s goin’ to be happy.”

_Spike, it’s just as bad to force him by telling him that you **will** force him as it is to force him directly. Please don’t._

Wesley smiled, without humour. “You two… Do you fight like this over things that aren’t me?”

Spike snorted. “All the bloody time. Have to say that you’re givin’ us much more interestin’ fights, though. Come on, they used to tell me that confession was good for the soul, an’ the soul is Rupert. You want to do good to Rupert, don’t you? Make him happy wi’ you?” His voice had become slyly coaxing. “Thought we’d already established that one. Rupert tells you what to do, an’ you do _anythin’_ to please him.”

Now that he knew what it was, he felt the reaction in their Pet.

“What’s wrong wi’ that?” Spike sounded totally baffled. “I mean, before, it was you an’ yer fantasies, wasn’t a problem. Granted Rupert would have been a bit taken aback if he’d known, but he didn’t find out an’ it’s not like it was doin’ him any harm. Now, if anythin’, it makes it easier fer the three of us. It certainly did for you tonight; I understand it because I can see that Rupert could be the total Killer Dom if he wanted.”

_Could be the what?_

“An’ he would be damn hot that way, too. Now me, I can do it, I can top a bit, enjoy it, but I like it better from your side. Don’t do it the same way, though. You want to sub fer him so he’ll be pleased wi’ you. You want to give it to him. Me, when I sub, I want somebody — an’ don’t worry, I dreamed about it bein’ Rupert sometimes too — somebody to _take_ it. I want to be _made_ to obey.”

_Good lord._

Spike and Wesley exchanged glances. “When it comes to power exchanges, he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow yet, but he’s a damn quick learner. That wi’ you tonight? I gave him about four lines, an’ then he ran with them, an’ it was good fer you, wasn’t it? So why are you frettin’ about it?” The vampire frowned. He wasn’t, despite the impression he went to so much trouble to give, thought Giles affectionately, at all stupid. “Should I be linkin’ you gettin’ in a state about Rupert wi’ somebody sayin’ that you weren’t…”

_Roger. Wesley, does Roger know that you’re interested in men?_

The turn of the head to hide the face was answer enough.

_And he would disapprove, of course._

“He doesn’t _know_ ,” whispered Wesley desperately.

_He suspects._

“Yes. And he suspected… He said when I came back from America that I’d changed.”

“You could hardly not have changed, not if you had any wit at all,” interjected Spike.

“I, I argued with him about the right way to deal with the Slayer.”

“Bet that went down… about as well as tellin’ Travis that the current Watcher was an American wi’ no formal trainin’ an’ no qualifications.”

“He blamed Mr Giles for it. And then he said that… he asked if Mr Giles… if we…”

_Good lord._

“See, Rupert, I told you that you were givin’ off the vibe.”

“I said no,” put in Wesley hastily. “But we argued. He said… he said that the way Mr Giles… that Mr Giles was an unsatisfactory Watcher, and that he had made me into an unsatisfactory Watcher too, that I was too impressionable. I said something about… about trusting Mr Giles’ opinion over most of the Council, and he… he accused me of, of an improper affection.”

_Ah, the standard Council complaint. They don’t think anybody should ever be fond of anybody else._

Wesley shook his head. “He said… he basically said what you just said. About how I was too anxious to please, I was weak, I was…”

“Wes. Wes! Nobody said you were too anxious to please, an’ nobody said you were weak.”

“You said…”

“I said that when it comes to sex, you were submissive by nature. Which you are. So am I. There’s nothin’ weak about it, Wes. It takes a _lot_ of courage. It’s _hard_ to give yerself up to somebody else. It’s _frightenin’,_ specially the first time. It’s not easy to find the person you can trust — because you have to be able to trust them to push you over the edge, when you’re too scared to jump — an’ then to catch you when you fall. An’ I don’t see how you can do it your way — I can push an’ push an’ push at someone until they take what they want — which is what _I_ want — whether I want to give it or not. I couldn’t do what you want to do, which is offer meself. I haven’t the balls fer it. Rupert, if you say _good lord_ again, I’m evictin’ you.”

_Good grief? Is there any wine left?_

Spike upended the bottle. “No.”

Wesley, wordlessly, got up and fetched a fresh bottle from a kitchen cupboard. They were silent for half a glass.

_All right. I’m not_ _… I’m feeling a little slow on the uptake here, and I’m hampered by not understanding half the words. It’s like Willow and her damned machines. Spike, what’s a Killer Dom?_

Spike showed him a mental picture.

_Good_ _…_

“Rupert!”

_…ness. Are the clothes compulsory? Because I don’t think I could… oh, no, I was forgetting, the body is yours. Well, yes, I can see that would work on your body. And this is what you want, Wesley?_

Wesley gulped desperately at a rather good claret in a manner of which Giles could not approve. “Not really, no.”

“That’s the way _I_ like it, Rupert. I _told_ you, he wants the Boss Watcher. He doesn’t want whips an’ chains — unless that’s what _you_ want, because he wants to give you what you want — he wants you to be pleased wi’ him. He doesn’t actually _want_ a spankin’, unless you want to give him one. He _does_ want to know that if he steps out of line, you’ll give him one whether he wants it or not. That’s it, Wes, innit?”

Wesley hid in his wine glass.

_Wesley? Is that it?_

He suddenly understood what Spike had been saying about the courage to submit, when he saw what it cost Wesley to look up, and nod.

 _I can do that for you. Spike will have to teach me how, but I can do it._ That sounded a little ungracious and as if he was humouring Wesley unwillingly. Fortunately, the Ripper drawl was easier to do telepathically than through Spike’s vocal cords. _It sounds like something that would be good for both of us._

“Mr Giles, you…” Wesley stopped abruptly. Spike laughed.

“You’re a quick learner too, aren’t you, Wes? Don’t want yer arse tanned again tonight? Because if you’d said he didn’t have to do anythin’ he was goin’ to wallop you, wasn’t he? An’ I’d have told him that he _had_ to, that once he’d made the threat, he had to carry through.”

Wesley was biting his lip, caught between embarrassment and laughter.

_I think it’s a great shame that I can’t spank Spike, because obviously somebody ought to. Unless, Wesley_ _…_

Wesley was shaking his head; Spike frowned. “Won’t work, Rupert. Told you, I have to be… I won’t do it just to please a Dom. It’s not the approval, fer me; it’s the sensation. The pain. The control. Quite like a bit of bondage, me. Never did tell you that I got off on the chains in yer bath, did I? But I would need it to be Ripper, not Rupert, an’ I don’t think Wes has got that. I admit, I’ll be sorry not to get some of it occasionally but…” And then in a rush, “But the way this soul thing is, it costs here an’ there, for both of us, but it’s not more than I’m willin’ to pay.”

_It’s more than I’m happy that you have to pay._

Wesley looked puzzled. “But, wouldn’t… I mean, don’t you feel what he feels? So… if that’s not something you would want on your own account, surely you wouldn’t like it and then Spike wouldn’t… or is that not…?”

Spike stretched out his legs, thinking about it. “If we’re sharin’ the space, we both feel. When one of us is runnin’ the show, that one feels, an’ it’s like… the other gets Sensation Lite.”

_Wait a minute, Spike. Wait. Now. Do something physical. Something that I would have found unpleasant when I was alive._

Spike frowned, and then his face cleared. “Oh, I see. Clever.” He got up and carried the empty wine bottle to the small kitchen, with Wesley following him, curious; he smashed the bottle in the sink (Giles winced for the neighbours again) and slashed the sharp edge across his palm and they watched the gash drip, and then knit and smooth back to unmarked flesh. “Did you feel that, Rupert?”

_Not badly. Best I can explain it is that it was like hearing next door’s radio. If I listen I can hear it, maybe enough to identify what they’re listening to, but if I’m concentrating on something else, I can blank it. Wesley, that was the standard mental ward from Dr Pascal’s classes._

“So Spike could go… could find somebody…” Wesley’s mouth twisted.

“Yeah, an’ that’s where it falls flat, Rupert, because from the look o’ things, Pryce here is monogamous, which is a problem already because it’s your mind an’ my body an’ I’m _here,_ an’ he’s my — our — Pet so he’s goin’ to feel it badly if I’m off wi’ somebody else. An’ most vampires don’t care what their Pets feel because they’re _Pets_ , they’re not people, but I’ve got a soul, an’ my soul is a bloody nag when he thinks I’m not doin’ right.”

Wesley, who seemed to be combining total mortification at the whole situation with an advanced level of intellectual curiosity and fascination, frowned. “I, yes, I’m… Even when you talk about somebody else, it makes me uncomfortable. That’s the Pet thing, I can feel it. But… Um… I never even…” He was scarlet and perspiring again. “I always thought I was monogamous, but… You mean that it’s your body and…”

“I mean,” said Spike crisply, “that occasionally, I would like a shag in my own body, thanks.”

Wesley shut his eyes. “It’s not a problem, not for me. That might be the Pet thing too. Although I’d understand if you didn’t want…”

Spike stared. “You’re willin’ to have sex wi’ me, wi’ _me_ , wi’ Spike the vampire, not with Rupert callin’ the shots.”

“Yes,” said Wesley, faintly.

_Well, that’s good. And Spike, I have to admit that I don’t understand how this domination and submission thing works — I knew it existed, of course, but only in the way of smutty jokes, I never tried it — but_ _… all right. You say it won’t work for you if Wesley does it?_

“No. Sorry, Wes.”

Wesley made a vague gesture of understanding. “It won’t work for me if you do it in your own persona, either.”

_I see. But Wesley, could you do it, the, the mechanics of it? I mean, would you be **willing** to do it to a partner who wanted it? Does the very idea make you uncomfortable?_

Wesley shrugged. “If somebody wanted me to, I suppose I could.”

_Spike, what about if Wesley does it because I’m telling him to? If I direct the scene and he acts as my hands?_

They stared at each other. Spike recovered first. “Can you do that? Can you ward yourself off from the feelin’, an’ still… still talk? Still think?”

_I think so._

“Not so much Killer Dom as Dead Dom,” said Wesley weakly.

“Win-win,” agreed Spike. “I get the pain, from him. You get to do what he tells you an’ know he’s pleased wi’ you.”

_I get laid._

Wesley laughed, with a faint edge of hysteria. “How’s being dead, Mr Giles?”

_So far it has a lot to recommend it. And_ _… I have another idea._

Spike got up and held out his hand to Wesley. “If it’s as good as the last one, I need to be lyin’ down fer it, an’ Wes looks ready to drop. Bed?”

Wesley agreed. “Just as well I don't have to go to work in the morning.”

_Yes_ _… that’s what I want to talk to you about. You see, I was thinking…_


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The combination of book smart, street smart and dead smart does not bode well for the Council.

Quentin Travers frowned at the agenda in front of him. “Item 7,” he said, disapprovingly. “Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. Roger, what in the name of goodness is your boy up to? Can’t you bring him to his senses?”

Roger, mute, mortified, shook his head. At the other end of the table, Bamford flicked through the small pile of copy documents. “Let me just see if I’m understanding this, Quentin. Pryce — Wesley,” he clarified, with a glance at Roger, “made three formal, written, requests for a meeting with you, to discuss his workload, and you refused him?”

Quentin nodded. “There was nothing to discuss. We agreed when he refused to press for his place with the Slayer that a year in the basement might make him more amenable to reason. I fully expected him to complain about it.”

“Yes, I see. But you refused him, in writing. And then he handed in his notice, yes?”

Quentin hadn’t been sorry, and he didn’t really think that Roger had, either. The boy — he still thought of him as a boy, although of course he was a man grown — the boy was a waste of space as a Watcher and nothing he said was of much use to man or beast. Drag on the payroll.

“There was some vague rumour about the vampires at the Hellfire Club, and that vampire who had run about with the American Slayer having taken Pryce as a Pet?” questioned Amelia FitzOsbourne-ffrench.

“Patent nonsense,” Quentin assured her. “There has never been a Watcher taken as a Pet. It’s been tried, but the Watcher doesn’t survive it, fortunately. Apparently the attempt crazes the vampire and it ends up draining the victim. He’s not been turned: our security wards would catch that and he comes and goes freely in daylight. Anyway, if Wesley had been behaving oddly — and if he had been taken as a Pet, he could hardly avoid behaving oddly — de Villiers would have noticed.”

The group’s attention slid around the table. de Villiers shrugged. “I’m in the basement at least half of every day, supervising. The only thing different about the man that I’ve noticed recently is that some days he fidgets constantly in his chair.”

“The look of a man who’s been thoroughly shagged and not too long ago,” Susannah Loveridge muttered, just too quietly for either Quentin or Roger to be sure what she’d said; Steven Jessamy sniggered.

“It’s not in the basement that he’s different,” observed Crispin Mountford. “He’s got a following now among some of the younger trainees.”

Roger looked up sharply. “Are you suggesting that he’s… entertaining unsuitable relationships?”

“Would that be likely?” asked Damaris Holloway.

Roger looked away. “I have reason to believe that he might be… his preferences might run to men.”

Damaris looked blank. “So? He’s not involved with the Academy, is he? So we’re not talking about children. The trainees here are all of age and personal relationships are not prohibited, even ones between staff of the same sex.”

Crispin coughed. “I think we’re getting off the point. I’ve not seen any sign of that sort of relationship. I’ve seen a sort of lunch club.”

“A lunch club,” repeated Quentin, blankly. He could make no sense of this.

Crispin nodded. “The younger trainees, the ones who don’t still live at home, have always tended to watch their budgets, and the canteen is… Well, it’s not exactly a secret that it’s both expensive and dull. Most of the young ones bring a packed lunch. Any time the weather’s good enough they tend to scatter into the grounds. Recently, a group of seven or eight of them has been sitting out past the armoury block every lunchtime; Wyndham-Pryce is telling them stories about the American Slayer, and about Rupert Giles.”

There was silence for a moment. Quentin frowned. “Past the armoury.”

Crispin nodded again. “It took me some time to join the dots: they’re sitting by Rupert Giles’ grave. Have you noticed, there are always flowers there now? The trainees take it in turn to provide them. I asked about it one day, and one of them told me that they thought it wasn’t… wasn’t _proper_ , I think that was the word she used, that he wasn’t in the Garden of Remembrance, and that the Junior Combination Room had passed a motion that since the Council as a whole wasn’t marking the appropriate observances for him, the JCR would. Apparently they’ve ordered a stone, too.”

“That will have to be stopped,” said Quentin, slowly.

“Why?” asked Steven Jessamy innocently. “On what grounds? If you recall, Quentin, some of us warned you when you refused to take Rupert’s ashes into the Garden, that it was ill-advised. According to the Ordinances of the Council, he had a right to burial there. If any member of his family had thought to press for it, you would have been making a _big_ mistake to refuse them. I would be very much afraid that if you make any more fuss, somebody in the JCR — there are some right barrack-room lawyers in the current intake — will remember that if they have a grievance and the Senior Combination Room and Council as a whole refuse to address it, they have a right of appeal to the Crown. We know how Her Majesty feels about proper respect being shown towards members of her Armed Forces killed in the line of duty or dying in office. I for one don’t fancy trying to explain to her why her last active Watcher, the one who kept his Slayer alive for longer, and through more apocalypses, than _any_ previous Watcher, _ever_ , is in an unmarked grave, a hundred yards from the overflow for the septic tank. I suggest that you leave the trainees strictly alone, since there is _nothing_ in the regulations to prevent them eating their lunches in the open air, tending a grave, or associating freely with each other, or with any member of the SCR. They aren’t conspiring, Quentin. I sat with them one day myself, and all that was happening was that Wesley Wyndham-Pryce was telling them about Buffy Summers and the Sunnydale Hellmouth, and how it came about that Faith Lehane was Called. None of it’s a secret. You may wish it hadn't happened, but it did; it doesn’t make the Council look good but trying to hide it will make us look much worse.”

“Can we keep to the _point?_ ” demanded Bamford crossly. “Whatever he was doing, it doesn’t sound as if it’s relevant here. He handed in his notice. And then?”

Quentin shifted a little uncomfortably. “We told him he wasn’t required to work his month, and Security watched him clear his desk. And then we got the letter from Savernake, Golightly and B¬n#tg.”

“I hate bloody demon lawyers,” muttered Amelia FitzOsbourne-ffrench.

“At least you can negotiate with demon lawyers,” objected de Villiers. “Human ones you can’t even count on doing that. So he’s claiming constructive dismissal?”

Quentin nodded unwillingly. “Demotion from Active Watcher to junior researcher — they claim that the loss of status outweighs the fact that he stayed on his original salary. Unilateral contract changes. Major alterations to duties. He’s claiming that we refused to address his valid concerns.”

“You did,” pointed out Susannah Loveridge blandly. “He made three written attempts to raise them and you refused. That’s against the standard HR procedure. I presume you put it out to the legal department?”

Quentin looked slightly past her. “I, ah, yes. They suggest that for the sake of, of a speedy and discreet conclusion to the matter, we, ah, we settle out of court.” They had actually told him that legally, he hadn’t a leg to stand on; he had spent a rather unpleasant afternoon in which the legal department, the human and non-human resources people and the head of finance had made it plain to him that the problem was major, was of his making, and was going to have an unpleasant effect on the fiscal position for the rest of the year.

“Is there an alternative to paying him?” Steven Jessamy, it seemed, also wanted to see him squirm.

Bamford flicked through the last two pages of the legal team’s opinion. “No. Six figure sum for loss of earnings in a closed field of employment, damage to future prospects, hurt feelings, legal costs, et cetera, et cetera. Quentin, this will have to come out of your budget, not anybody else’s. Defending the case will cost twice as much and bring us into the public eye, and we’ll lose. I propose we pay him and be done. Any objections?”

There were many, but none that Quentin could bring himself to put into words.

* * * * *

“Hey, Willow?”

“Mm-hm?”

“Got an email from Wesley.”

She looked up. “Wesley has email? Giles must be turning in his grave.”

He grinned at her. It had taken a long time before they could say ‘Giles used to do’ or ‘Giles used to say’ without one of them cracking, but they were getting there. “It’s _way_ worse than just having email. Wesley has a website.”

She set the book aside and came to look over his shoulder. “Wow. Fancy graphics. He can’t have made that himself, can he?”

“No, look, those are the same people who did the site for the place Buffy got the magic sword.”

“Why has he got a site, Xander?”

“Will, you just won’t _believe_ this. I’m not sure we shouldn’t be going to England to see what sort of bewilderment spell he’s under. He’s left the Council.”

She gawped at him. “No way.”

“Way, apparently. He’s set up a business.”

“Doing what?”

“Well, according to the website, he’s a jobbing researcher: he says he actually is doing some non-slayage type research for university and museum types. But if you can read the runes on… _this_ page, there are links to what he’s really doing, which is _our_ sort of research. He’s offered me something he calls Mates’ Rates, which I _think_ is Family Discount.”

“Mates’ Rates.” Willow tried the phrase and found it to her liking. “Doesn’t sound like the kind of thing Wesley would say.”

“Ah. I think that’s because it might have been dreamed up by his partner. And when I say ‘partner’, Wills, he implies that this is a partnership of, ah, partners. That they are partners in all the partnery ways people can be partners.”

She clapped her hands. “Wesley has a partner? A girlfriend?”

“A partner, yes. A girlfriend, not so much.”

Her eyes went big and wide. “A _boy_ friend? No _way!_ ”

“Yes, way. And guess who, Will. Somebody we know. Some _body_ we know.”

“Who do we know in Eng… Xander Harris! You don’t mean _Spike?_ ”

“Spike it is. Spike and Wesley are sharing an apartment and running a business called _Valknut_. Not just research, either: artefact-recovery and demon-slaying. Wesley. Demon-slaying. Does that work? Or do you think Spike does the demon-slaying? Look at their logo: I’ve… I’ve seen that symbol before, Will, in something of Giles’s.” He thought for a moment, while she stared at the rune.

“It’s a form of Borromean ring, I think. I remember them from math class; we covered them in topology.” She looked up. “If you take any one of them out, the other two fall apart; they only hold together when all three of them are present.”

Xander flipped the pages of the book he had pulled from the shelf. “‘The symbol has been used many times to represent linked triads,’” he read. “‘In particular, it is frequently an emblem of the Holy Trinity, but it has also been used to demonstrate the attributes of Lacanian reality: the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. The Valknut, or knot of the dead, can be a powerful rune.’” He snapped the book shut. “I wonder if they chose a death symbol because of Spike?”

“And a triple knot for life, death and undeath?” guessed Willow. “Wesley, William Pratt and Spike? Wesley and Spike. Spike and Wesley. I would never have seen them as a couple, Xander.”

He agreed. “You know,” he said cautiously, not sure how she would respond, “I could have seen Wesley and Giles. Not at first, I guess, but once Wesley stopped being a dork. Because the books and the research, and the whole English thing...”

“And Giles obviously was interested in men as well as women,” she agreed. “I mean, Ethan Rayne? Anybody could see there had been a thing there. Giles and Spike, I could see that, too.”

“For real? But they fought all the time!”

“By the end, it wasn’t real fighting, though,” she objected. “They were just scoring points off each other; I think it was more a game than anything else. Spike and Wesley, though? I don’t see it, but... well, I hope it works out for them.” She turned businesslike. “What can they do for us?”

* * * * *

_Spike, if you_ _’re going to climb on his furniture while he’s at work, at least take your boots off first. What are you looking for?_

“I just don’t believe that he doesn’t have one. It’s here somewhere an’ we need to find it.”

_What?_

“His collection of porn mags.”

He would have pinched his nose or polished his spectacles if he’d had the physical capacity for either. Well, or the need. He would admit, if pressed, that he didn’t miss his spectacles at all. _Why are we looking for something so_ _… personal? And what makes you think that he’ll have anything of the kind?_

“Well, _you_ did. Oh, I got Harris to dispose o’ them wi’out the Slayer seein’.”

 _I_ _… thank you, I think, although I think I would also have preferred for Xander not to… well, never mind. I_ _still don’t see_ _… I mean, I thought that we set up this flat so that each of you would have a private space in which the other would not intrude, so why are we searching his room for something that he plainly doesn’t want to share with us? If he did want to share it, it would be in the bedroom._

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Next time we go out, we’ll get some to read in bed together. See if we can make Wes blush again. He’s bloody gorgeous when he blushes.”

_He is, isn’t he? But that doesn’t explain what we’re doing?_

“Research.”

_Go on._

“Well, obvious, innit? He’ll have porn mags fer the sort o’ thing he likes. He’ll keep the ones he _really_ likes. The dog-eared ones will be the ones he _really, really_ likes. So that’ll tell us what he likes, an’ then you can give it to him, an’ once he realises that he’s _gettin’_ what he likes, he’ll relax an’ be more willin’ to tell us in words what he wants rather than hopin’ that we can guess. I mean, we’re not doin’ badly wi’ the guessin’ but we could do wi’ more clues. An’ then, if he’s got some of the more... specialised... magazines, you can read up on the mindsets of Doms an’ Subs an’ get a better feel for what you should be doin’. Although you’re doin’ very well, you know, wi’ both of us. Hence why we are oversteppin’ boundaries an’ intrudin on his private space an’ the rest of the things that Rupert thinks we shouldn’t be doin’, an’ that we’re never, never goin’ to tell Wesley that we’ve done, although personally I don’t think he’s that stupid. He knows damn well that I’ll overstep. He’s just hopin’ that you’ll stop me goin’ too far.”

_I **will** stop you. You will have to be punished, severely, for overstepping. Wesley will need to see that I don’t let you get away with breaking the rules, any more than I let him get away with it. We’ll call Wesley later; he can go to the outdoor sports shop on his way home and buy a schooling whip._

Spike shuddered, his jeans suddenly very tight.

_Meanwhile, Ripper says, try the bottom of the bookcase behind the big demonology._


End file.
